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"Weapons systems United States History 20th century."
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Machines and weaponry of the Cold War
Describes the different machines and weapons that were used during the Cold War, discussing each item's history and capabilities.
Book
Torpedo : inventing the military-industrial complex in the United States and Great Britain
In a bold reappraisal, Katherine Epstein uncovers the origins of the \"military-industrial complex\" not in the Cold War but in the decades before WWI, as the United States and Great Britain struggled to perfect a crucial new weapon: the self-propelled torpedo. Torpedo R&D sparked intellectual property battles that reshaped national security law.
eBook
Long shot : vaccines for national defense
At the turn of the twenty-first century, the United States contended with a state-run biological warfare program, bioterrorism, and a pandemic. Together, these threats spurred large-scale government demand for new vaccines, but few have materialized. A new anthrax vaccine has been a priority since the first Gulf War, but twenty years and a billion dollars later, the United States still does not have one. This failure is startling.
Historically, the United States has excelled at responding to national health emergencies. World War II era programs developed ten new or improved vaccines, often in time to meet the objectives of particular military missions. Probing the history of vaccine development for factors that foster timely innovation, Kendall Hoyt discovered that vaccine innovation has been falling, not rising, since World War II. This finding is at odds with prevailing theories of market-based innovation and suggests that a collection of nonmarket factors drove mid-century innovation. Ironically, many late-twentieth-century developments that have been celebrated as a boon for innovation—the birth of a biotechnology industry and the rise of specialization and outsourcing—undercut the collaborative networks and research practices that drove successful vaccine projects in the past.
Hoyt's timely investigation teaches important lessons for our efforts to rebuild twenty-first-century biodefense capabilities, especially when the financial payback for a particular vaccine is low, but the social returns are high.
eBook
Facing down the Soviet Union : Britain, the USA, NATO and nuclear weapons, 1976-1983
\"Facing Down the Soviet Union reveals for the first time the historic deliberations regarding the Chevaline upgrade to Britain's Polaris force, the decisions to procure the Trident C-4 and then D-5 system from the Americans in 1980 and 1982. It also details the highly controversial decision to base Ground Launched Cruise Missiles in the UK in 1983. Chevaline was one of the most expensive and technically difficult defence projects the British had yet undertaken. It took much of its rationale from intelligence assessments of Soviet anti-ballistic missiles which had planted doubts as to the effectiveness of Polaris as the UK's strategic deterrent. The Polaris-Chevaline system remained in service until it was gradually replaced with Trident in 1994. The first deal over Trident (the C-4 decision in 1980) was informed by the Chevaline experience and the penalties of a lack of commonality with the United States. The decision benefitted from a comprehensive study known as the Duff-Mason Report which was the key background document used by the Conservative government of Mrs. Thatcher in the purchase of C-4. The decision to opt for the increased striking power of Trident II D-5 was also driven by the penalties of time-limited commonality with the Americans. It remains operational with both the Royal Navy and United States Navy\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Competitive Arms Control
The essential history of the Strategic Arms Limitation
Talks (SALT) during the Nixon Administration How did
Richard Nixon, a president so determined to compete for strategic
nuclear advantage over the Soviet Union, become one of the most
successful arms controllers of the Cold War? Drawing on newly
opened Cold War archives, John D. Maurer argues that a central
purpose of arms control talks for American leaders was to channel
nuclear competition toward areas of American advantage and not just
international cooperation. While previous accounts of the Strategic
Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) have emphasized American cooperative
motives, Maurer highlights how Nixon, National Security Advisor
Henry Kissinger, and Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird shaped
negotiations, balancing their own competitive interests with
proponents of cooperation while still providing a coherent
rationale to Congress. Within the arms control agreements, American
leaders intended to continue deploying new weapons, and the arms
control restrictions, as negotiated, allowed the United States to
sustain its global power, contain communism, and ultimately prevail
in the Cold War.
eBook
Watchdogs on the Hill
An essential responsibility of the U.S. Congress is holding the president accountable for the conduct of foreign policy. In this in-depth look at formal oversight hearings by the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, Linda Fowler evaluates how the legislature's most visible and important watchdogs performed from the mid-twentieth century to the present. She finds a noticeable reduction in public and secret hearings since the mid-1990s and establishes that American foreign policy frequently violated basic conditions for democratic accountability. Committee scrutiny of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, she notes, fell below levels of oversight in prior major conflicts.
Fowler attributes the drop in watchdog activity to growing disinterest among senators in committee work, biases among members who join the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, and motives that shield presidents, particularly Republicans, from public inquiry. Her detailed case studies of the Truman Doctrine, Vietnam War, Panama Canal Treaty, humanitarian mission in Somalia, and Iraq War illustrate the importance of oversight in generating the information citizens need to judge the president's national security policies. She argues for a reassessment of congressional war powers and proposes reforms to encourage Senate watchdogs to improve public deliberation about decisions of war and peace.
Watchdogs on the Hillinvestigates America's national security oversight and its critical place in the review of congressional and presidential powers in foreign policy.
eBook
American arsenal : a century of waging war
American Arsenal examines the United States' transformation from isolationist state to military superpower by means of sixteen vignettes, each focusing upon an inventor and his contribution to the cause. Beginning with Thomas Edison's developments of WWI submarine technology, and ending with Neal Blue, chairman of General Atomics, and his manufacturing of the drone, Patirck Coffey traces the story of each advance, from drawing board to use in the field.
eBook
Britain and Ballistic Missile Defence, 1942-2002
Britain was the first country to come under sustained ballistic missile attack, during 1944-45. Defence against ballistic missiles has been a persistent, if highly variable, subject of political policy and technical investigation ever since. The British Second World War experience of trying to counter the V-2 attacks contained many elements of subsequent responses to ballistic missile threats. After the war, a reasonably accurate picture of Soviet missile capabilities was not achieved until the early 1960s, by which time the problem of early warning had largely been solved. From the mid-1960s on, British attention shifted away from the development of the country's own defences towards the wider consequences of US and Soviet deployments. After the end of the Cold War there was renewed interest in a limited active-defence capability against Third World missile threats. This well-researched book is primarily aimed at students of post-war British foreign and defence policies, but will also be of interest to informed general readers.
1. Introduction 2. The Wartime V-2 Experience 3. The Emerging Soviet Threat 4. Early Efforts at Active Defence 5. Ballistic Missile Early Warning 6. American ABM Deployment 7. Soviet ABM Deployment 8. Britain and the Strategic Defense Initiative 9. After the Cold War 10. Britain and US National Missile Defense 11. Conclusions and Prospects
Jeremy Stocker is Director of Studies at the Centre for Defence and International Security Studies (CDISS), a British independent defence think tank. He served in the Royal Navy for twenty years, specialising in air defense, before transferring to the Royal Naval Reserve in 1996. Dr. Stocker is the author of Britain and Ballistic Missile Defense 1942-2002 and is a regular contributor to academic and professional journals on both sides of the Atlantic.
eBook
Against the Tide
Admiral Hyman Rickover personally revolutionized naval warfare and altered the outcome of the Cold War. Concurrently he drove innovation into American industry -- which in the decades since has proven to be a wellspring of power for American technology. As a touchstone of his success, during Rickover's stewardship the Russians had literally dozens of reactor accidents, but Rickover's single-minded focus on safety protected Americans as well as and our lands from nuclear contamination. Rickover did all of this initially by the force of his own personality and eventually by insisting on radical culture change. The author had the good fortune to personally know and be involved with Admiral Rickover as well as many of the most interesting players and protagonists during much of this thirty year process of wrenching cultural upheaval. The author leaves detailed biographical details of Rickover to others, instead focusing on previously unknown historical events in which he personally participated or had unique knowledge which highlight the management and leadership principles behind Rickover's achievements and place important events (President Eisenhower choosing nuclear submarines to counter Sputnik, development of the Polaris Fleet, the relationship of Admirals Zumwalt and Rickover, the loss of USS Scorpion, the superiority of the American submarines over the Soviet fleet, etc.) in an historical perspective. Because of his life's work, the author is uniquely qualified to apply many of Rickover's principles to other situations. For example, Dave well understands the particular navy culture Rickover had to destroy for the author began his own career on a diesel boat. Similarly since the author spent a decade in US industry as either the Chief Executive Officer or the Chief Operating Officer, he understands how to identify situations where Rickover's
principles can be applied to industry circumstances. This is done at the end of each chapter in the book, thus providing a starting point for any who wish to use this source for case studies.
eBook