Showing posts with label Military. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Military. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War

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Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War
Oxford University Press, USA | 2008-10-10 | ISBN 978-0-19-533305-3 | English | 400 pages | PDF | 3.4MB

The emir of Bukhara used assassin bugs to eat away the flesh of his prisoners. General Ishii Shiro during World War II released hundreds of millions of infected insects across China, ultimately causing more deaths than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. These are just two of many startling examples found in Six-legged Soldiers, a brilliant portrait of the many weirdly creative, truly frightening, and ultimately powerful ways in which insects have been used as weapons of war, terror, and torture.

Beginning in prehistoric times and building toward a near and disturbing future, the reader is taken on a journey of innovation and depravity. Award-winning science writer Jeffrey A. Lockwood begins with the development of "bee bombs" in the ancient world and explores the role of insect-borne disease in changing the course of major battles, ranging from Napoleon's military campaigns to the trenches of World War I. He explores the horrific programs of insect warfare during World War II: airplanes dropping plague-infested fleas, facilities rearing tens of millions of hungry beetles to destroy crops, and prison camps staffed by doctors testing disease-carrying lice on inmates. The Cold War saw secret government operations involving the mass release of specially developed strains of mosquitoes on an unsuspecting American public--along with the alleged use of disease-carrying and crop-eating pests against North Korea and Cuba. Lockwood reveals how easy it would be to use of insects in warfare and terrorism today: In 1989, domestic ecoterrorists extorted government officials and wreaked economic and political havoc by threatening to release the notorious Medfly into California's crops.

A remarkable story of human ingenuity--and brutality--Six-Legged Soldiers is the first comprehensive look at the use of insects as weapons of war, from ancient times to the present day. READ MORE
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A Military History of Russia: From Ivan the Terrible to the War in Chechnya

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A Military History of Russia: From Ivan the Terrible to the War in Chechnya
Praeger Security International| 2006|ISBN 0–275–98502–4| English| PDF|281 pages| 1.3 MB

This book brings to light Russia's undeservedly-obscure military past, rectifying the tendency of American and Western military historians to neglect the Russian side of things. Russia, as both a Western and non-Western society, challenges our thinking about Western military superiority. Russia has always struggled with backwardness in comparison with more developed powers, at some times more successfully than others. The imperatives of survival in a competitive international environment have, moreover, produced in Russian society a high degree of militarization. While including operational and tactical detail that appeals to military history enthusiasts, this book simultaneously integrates military history into the broader themes of Russian history and draws comparisons to developments in Europe. The book also challenges old assumptions about the Russian military. Russian military history cannot be summed up simply in a single stock phrase, whether perennial incompetence or success only through stolid, stoic defense; it also shows numerous examples of striking offensive successes. Stone traces Russia's fascinating military history, and its long struggle to master Western military technology without Western social and political institutions. It covers the military dimensions of the emergence of Muscovy, the disastrous reign of Ivan the Terrible, and the subsequent creation of the new Romanov dynasty. It deals with Russia's emergence as a great power under Peter the Great and culminating in the defeat of Napoleon. After that triumph, the book argues, Russia's social and economic stagnation undermined its enormous military power and brought catastrophic defeat in the Crimean War. The book then covers imperial Russia's long struggle to reform its military machine, with mixed results in the Russo-Japanese War and World War I. The Russian Revolution created a new Soviet Russia, but this book shows the continuity across that divide. The Soviet Union's interwar innovations and its harrowing experience in World War II owed much to imperial Russian precedents. A superpower after the war, the Soviet Union's military might was purchased at the expense of continuing economic backwardness. Paradoxically, the very militarization intended to provide security instead destroyed the Soviet Union, leaving a new Russia behind the West economically. Just as there was a great deal of continuity after 1917, this book demonstrates how the new Russian military has inherited many of its current problems from its Soviet predecessor. The price that Russia has paid for its continued existence as a great power, therefore, is the overwhelming militarization of its society and economy, a situation it continues to struggle with. READ MORE
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Friday, August 1, 2008

Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath

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Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath

Since 2006, the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) has contributed to the Project on National Security Reform’s study of the interagency process. The Project’s mission is “to assist national leadership in improving the U.S. Government’s ability to effectively provide for the nation’s security in the 21st century.” This study is aimed at developing an interagency reform agenda that would parallel the historic Goldwater- Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986.

The Project on National Security Reform is a nonpartisan initiative hosted by the Center for the Study of the Presidency. As part of this cooperative effort and in furtherance of the INSS mission to inform the national defense policy debate, INSS is publishing selected analyses on national security reform. This paper is a contribution to this endeavor.

The war in Iraq reminds us of the role that uncertainty and friction play in both the planning and the execution of military operations. Uncertainty and friction also apply to writing history and analyses of decisionmaking. At this juncture, there are no final truths about the war in Iraq, only early attempts to create a record. Those who demand complete and indisputable analysis of the war should remember that in the fall of 2007, some of our best scholars are still arguing over how World War I started. [Download]

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Thursday, July 31, 2008

Encyclopedia of Modern US Military Weapons

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Encyclopedia of Modern US Military Weapons

A look at the weapons, vehicles, equipment, and systems of the United States military, both past and present. The authors provide a sharp historical perspective on each weapon and offer information on future warfare systems. [Download]
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Saturday, July 26, 2008

F-35 Lightning II - The Future is Flying

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F-35 Lightning II - The Future is Flying

December 15, 2006: The F-35 Lightning II lifts into the skies for the first time. Chief Test Pilot Jon Beesley returns from the flight with a thumbs up and a big grin, exclaiming praise for an aircraft that flew “beautifully.” A new era in military aviation begins. Today, the first F-35 continues to validate the aircraft’s design while demonstrating uncommon reliability.

As the F-35 was beginning flight tests, another aircraft took to the air. The Cooperative Avionics Test Bed (CATBird), a highly modified 737, was developed to validate the Lightning II’s powerful avionics suite. The CATBird demonstrates the fighter’s ability to collect data from multiple sensors and fuse it into a coherent situational awareness display in a dynamic airborne environment. [Download]
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Saturday, June 28, 2008

F-16 A & B Fighting Falcon in Detail & Scale

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F-16 A & B Fighting Falcon in Detail & Scale

Unlike other publications on military aircraft, this book does not emphasize the history or markings carried by the aircraft featured. Instead attention is focused on the many physical details of the aircraft such as the cockpit interiors, radar and avionics installations, armament, landing gear, wheel wells, and ejection seats. These details are covered more thoroughly than in any other series and are presented in the form of close-up photography and line drawings. Special consideration is given to the detail differences between the variants and sub-variants of the aircraft. [more...]
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Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Terrorism in Asymmetrical Conflict: Ideological and Structural Aspects

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Terrorism in Asymmetrical Conflict: Ideological and Structural Aspects
 Oxford University Press | 2008 | ISBN 978–0–19–953355–8 | English | 200 pages | PDF | 1.7 MB

This thought-provoking book challenges the conventional discourse on—and responses to—contemporary terrorism. It examines the synergy between the extremist ideologies and the organizational models of non-state actors that use terrorist means in asymmetrical conflict. This synergy is what makes these terrorist groups so resilient in the face of the counterterrorist efforts of their main opponents—the state and the international system—which are conventionally far more powerful.

The book argues that the high mobilization potential of the supra-national extremist ideology inspired by al-Qaeda cannot be effectively counterbalanced at the global level by either the mainstream secular ideologies or moderate Islam. Instead, it is more likely to be affected and transformed by radical nationalism. Unless the political transformation of violent Islamist movements in specific national contexts is encouraged and the transnational ideology of violent Islamism is ‘nationalized’, it is unlikely to be amenable to external influence or to be destroyed by repression. [more...]
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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Effects of Directed Energy Weapons by Philip E. Nielsen

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Effects of Directed Energy Weapons by Philip E. Nielsen
USAF | 1994 | ISBN 0–945274–24–6 | English | 368 pages | PDF | 1.3 MB

Effects of Directed Energy Weapons is an encyclopedic treatment of how Directed Energy Weapons work, how the energy of these weapons is propagated to the target, and how the weapon/beam-target interaction creates effects (damage) in the target.

This is a technical exposition, written at the undergraduate physics and engineering level that could serve either as a text book or as a reference text for technical practitioners. The text addresses Kinetic Energy Weapons in addition to Lasers, Microwaves and Particle Beams.

About the Author:

Philip E. Nielsen is a director and senior technical advisor for MacAulay-Brown, Incorporated, a defense engineering services firm headquartered in Dayton, Ohio. Prior to joining MacAulay-Brown, Dr. Nielsen served on active duty with the U.S. Air Force (USAF) for 26 years, retiring as colonel.

During this period, he served in a variety of positions related to the research, development, and acquisition of advanced weapon systems. He received the USAF Research and Development Award for contribution to high energy laser physics in 1975.




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