MREADZ.COM - много разных книг на любой вкус
Скачивание или чтение онлайн электронных книг.The Elusive Enemy
In this exploration of U.S. naval operations and intelligence-gathering efforts, Douglas Ford introduces a new perspective on the clash between the United States and Japan in the Pacific. At the outset of the war, the U.S. Navy could not accurately determine the fighting efficiency of Japan’s Imperial Navy and land-based fighting forces. As the capabilities designed to improve intelligence gathering evolved, technology, ingenuity, and sheer luck often combined to produce useful, but incomplete, information. Only through combat over an extended period of time, Ford demonstrates, did the U.S. Navy actually identify the capabilities of its adversary. The intense combat produced a trove of information obtained from prisoners, captured weapons, and documents, and firsthand accounts of American naval personnel often provided some the most actionable intelligence of the war.In recent years, a large number of documents related to intelligence activities during World War II has been declassified and made available in U.S. and British archives. As a result, a steady flow of work on the subject has emerged. However, much of the work on intelligence has focused on signals decrypts and clandestine operations. The subject of qualitative intelligence about the performance and fighting capabilities of the Imperial Japanese Navy has remained largely unexplored. The Elusive Enemy fills that void. As a historical case study, it demonstrates how intelligence plays a critical role in influencing the conduct of warfare and the manner in which threat perceptions influence international relations. It also serves as an explanation of cultural factors and their subsequent influence on U.S. and Japanese military practices. Finally, it is an innovative explanation of American perceptions regarding the Japanese during a critical period of history. Such a comprehensive examination of the impact of intelligence on the conduct of various campaigns is without parallel.
Bioterror in the 21st Century
Daniel Gerstein draws on twenty-nine years of experience in the security and defense sectors to address the threat of bioterrorism. He argues that bioterrorism is a very real threat to humankind due to the 21st century’s confluence of globalization, terrorism and biotechnology. Each of these three components of bioterrorism is experiencing unprecedented – really exponential – growth and when examined collectively, these factors present a potentially serious challenge to both U.S. national security as well as to America’s scientific, organizational and cultural systems. This change is arguably the most dramatic in the field of biotechnology. As new discoveries are made, the potential misuse of this knowledge for bioterror grows as well. Since 2001 and the anthrax attacks in the United States, the bioterror question has received great scrutiny. Many argue that an Armageddon-like attack is imminent while others argue that the threat has been exaggerated. In this debate, it has become increasingly difficult to separate fact from fiction. While billions of dollars have been spent attempting to deal with and manage the perceived threats and vulnerabilities, the argument about the severity of the threat of bioterror continues. In his analysis Gerstein examines the potential for a bioterror attack using a classical game theory approach because it provides an objective capability for assessing future threats, understanding emerging trends and developing mitigation strategies. The use of game theory to examine this issue is highly useful as this application can assist in understanding human interactions and ultimately the decisions we make. In this regard, Bioterror in the 21st Century is it is less about predicting future behavior with any certainty, and more about understanding the framework within which this critical nexus continues to allow for more and more dangerous capabilities to proliferate around the world.
Sidewinder
In the mid-1950s a small group of overworked, underpaid scientists and engineers, working on a remote base in the Mojave Desert, developed a weapon no one had asked for but that everyone was looking for. Sidewinder is the story of how that unorthodox team at China Lake, lead by the visionary Bill McLean, overcame Navy bureaucracy and more heavily funded projects to develop the world's best air-to-air missile. Based on years of research and hundreds of interviews, Westrum’s study examines the unique military-civilian cult of creativity that helped Mclean and his China Lake team produce an amazing array of technological and engineering marvels. In the intellectual pressure cooker provided by the desert isolation, the scientists dreamed and tinkered while test pilots such as Wally Schirra and Glenn Tierney took to the air, often risking life and limb to test a fledgling system. Against the ongoing story of billion-dollar weapons development contracts, astronomical cost overruns, and defense acquisitions scandals, this revealing, highly readable account of the development of one of the most successful weapons in history provides an instructive contrast.
The U.S. Naval Institute on Naval Tactics
“Wheel books” were once found in the uniform pockets of virtually all junior officers and many senior petty officers. Each small notebook was unique to the Sailor carrying it, but all had in common a collection of data and wisdom that the individual deemed useful in the effective execution of his or her duties. Often used as a substitute for experience among neophytes and as a portable library of reference information for more experienced personnel, those weathered pages contained everything from the time of the next tide, to leadership hints from a respected chief petty officer, to the color coding of the phone-and-distance line used in underway replenishments.In that same tradition, the Naval Institute has created and aptly named the Wheel Book series, portable libraries culled from USNI’s vast array of information that has accumulated for more than a century. Articles from the Institute’s flagship publication Proceedings are combined with selections from USNI’s oral history program and from Naval Institute Press books to create unique guides on a wide array of relevant professional subjects.Just as the “wheel books” of yesterday served the fleet well, the Naval Institute Wheel Books of today provide supplemental information, pragmatic advice, and cogent analysis on topics important to modern naval professionals. The late Vice Admiral A.K. Cebrowski—well known as a brilliant thinker on the subject of naval warfare—once described naval tactics as “the sum of the art and science of the actual application of combat power.” Renowned naval tactician Captain Wayne Hughes adds that the study of naval tactics “strives to bring whatever order and understanding is possible out of the chaos of battle.” With those words of wisdom serving as “commander’s intent,” this collection sheds a bright light on this sometimes dark and mysterious but unquestionably essential realm, illuminating the principles and concepts that serve the warrior at the most critical moments in his or her profession.
In Final Defense of the Reich
In April 1945 the American 71st Infantry Division exacted the final vestiges of life from the Reich's 6th SS Mountain Division in central Germany. On Easter weekend, the bypassed German division fought to the very end as they were first surrounded and then destroyed as a fighting force. Rusiecki argues that the battle demonstrates that the Wehrmacht’s last gasp on the Western Front was anything but a whimper as some historians charge. Instead, many of Germany’s final combat formations fought to the very end against a chaotic tableau of misery, destruction, and suffering to exact every last bit of pain upon their soon-to-be conquerors. In recounting this final, desperate act of Germany’s once great Wehrmacht, In the Final Defense of the Reich follows the histories of both the German 6th SS Mountain Division and the American 71st Infantry Division from their inceptions until their ultimate and fateful confrontation in Germany in the wake of Patton’s advancing Third Army. The history of this undiscovered and overlooked battle is not simply an archival chronicle of the action, but a testament to the human experience in war – both from the perspective of the soldiers involved and the civilians who must suffer the brunt of the fighting. The battle not only details one of Nazi Germany’s final military campaigns but also serves as a timeless and cautionary tale of the horrors of war and the price mankind pays for such demonstrations of national power.This book is published in cooperation with the Association of the U.S. Army.
Fallujah Redux
The city of Fallujah, Iraq will long be associated with some of the worst violence and brutality of the Iraq war. The battles to retake the city from insurgent fighters in 2004 have already indelibly carved its name into the historic annals of the U.S. military and occupy a revered place in the storied history of the United States Marine Corps. Initially occupied by U.S. forces in 2003, it eventually served as the headquarters for numerous insurgent groups operating west of Baghdad, including al-Qaeda in Iraq and its leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, until forcibly retaken at the end of 2004. Once the city was finally cleared, U.S. forces concentrated on trying to prevent it from returning to insurgent control by waging a counter insurgency campaign against both nationalist and extremist Islamist insurgent forces. It was a long, frustrating and, at times, brutal fight for control of the population with the eventual goal of setting the conditions for eventual Iraqi Government control and enabling U.S. forces to leave. Even though Coalition Forces were winning tactically, the initial policies of the Coalition Provisional Authority, which had deeply alienated the Sunni Arab population, negative press coverage of the ongoing violence, as well as the often clumsy and ineffective efforts of the developing Iraqi Security Forces served to make winning over the population a difficult process at best. The people of the area still strongly supported the nationalist insurgents and, although they often allied with the Islamists to push Coalition Forces out of Iraq, were frequently more terrified of the extremist Islamist insurgents than supportive. There seemed to be little U.S. forces could do to change the situation. By the middle of 2007, four years after the initial invasion of Iraq, the city of Fallujah and its surrounding countryside remained mired in a seemingly intractable cycle of violent action and counteraction between government security forces, assisted by U.S. forces, and the various insurgent groups. It was an unstable and chaotic time. It had even gotten to the point that some on the coalition side were beginning to wonder if Fallujah was being lost all over again. All of this began to change in 2007.Progress up to that point had been slow, difficult to assess, and occurred in fits and starts. The hardest aspect of the counter-insurgency effort was maintaining a sense of enduring security for the population so that Iraqis would not have to live in constant fear of retribution from the different insurgent groups. Lacking an adequate Iraqi partner, this task was beyond the resources of U.S. forces in Anbar Province – something needed to change. Beginning in June 2007, local security conditions in Fallujah were fundamentally altered due to a concerted U.S. pacification campaign in the city, increased cooperation from local tribes, and greater efforts by Iraqi Security Forces. This campaign took advantage of the tide of the Al Anbar Awakening Movement that was sweeping the province from west to east as the tribes in the area and the broader Sunni Arab community began to turn against al-Qaeda in 2006 and 2007. As this movement gained momentum, Fallujah’s residents were waiting for it to push eastward in order to help them eliminate al-Qaeda from their own communities. Even though the local population had not yet risen up against the terrorist group, they were keen to do so and needed the help of U.S. forces. The campaign described in this book gave them this opportunity.
From Kabul to Baghdad and Back
From Kabul to Baghdad and Back provides insight into the key strategic decisions of the Afghan and Iraq campaigns as the United States attempted to wage both simultaneously against al-Qaeda and its supporting affiliates. It also evaluates the strategic execution of those military campaigns to identify how well the two operations were conducted in light of their political objectives. The book identifies the elements that made the 2001 military operation to oust the Taliban successful, then with combat operations in Iraq as a standard of comparison, the authors analyze the remainder of the Afghan campaign and the essential problems that plagued that effort, from the decision to go to war with Iraq in 2002, through the ill-fated transition to NATO lead in Afghanistan in 2006, the dismissal of Generals McKiernan and McChrystal, the eventual decision by President Obama to make the Afghan campaign the main effort in the war on extremism, and the final development of drawdown plans following the end of the war in Iraq. No other book successfully compares and contrasts the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan from a national strategic perspective, analyzing the impact of fighting the Iraq War on the success of the United States campaign in Afghanistan. It is also the first book to specifically question several key operational decisions in Afghanistan including: the decision to give NATO the lead in Afghanistan, the decisions to fire Generals McKiernan and McChrystal and the decision to conduct an Iraq War-style surge in Afghanistan. It also compares the Afghan campaigns fought by the Soviet Union and the United States, the counterinsurgency campaigns styles in Iraq and Afghanistan and the leadership of senior American officials in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In the final chapter, the key lessons of the two campaigns are outlined, including the importance of effective strategic decision-making, the utility of population focused counterinsurgency practices, the challenges of building partner capacity during combat, and the mindset required to prosecute modern war.
Requiem for Battleship Yamato
A young ensign on the bridge of the fabled battleship Yamato during her final battle, recounts his experience.
In the Hands of Fate
Patrol Wing Ten was the only U.S. Navy aviation unit to fight the Japanese in the early weeks of World War II, and the daring exploits of its PBY scout-plane pilots offer a dramatic tale of heroism, duty, and controversy. Poorly equipped and dead tired from flying back-to-back patrols with no fighter cover, the men lost sixty-six percent of their aircraft in just eight weeks as they took on an enemy that outnumbered them nearly 1,000 to one. This forceful narrative places the reader right in the midst of their courageous battle. Dwight Messimer's aggressive research on the topic has resulted in a work that provides moving details to their desperate but valiant acts against the seemingly invincible Japanese juggernaut that swept across the southwest Pacific at the opening of the war.By Christmas Day in 1941, Patrol Wing Ten was forced to split into two groups, one fighting an air and sea campaign in Java, the other fighting as infantry on Bataan and Corregidor. Moving back and forth between the two groups, Messimer skillfully interweaves their experiences with the major events of the overall war. He uses material from the fifty survivors he managed to track down and deftly captures their ability to maintain a sense of humor in the face of overwhelming danger. The more than one hundred personal and official documents uncovered during years of research reveal new information relating to technical points about the planes, facts verified by the PBY crews that do not agree with popularly accepted ideas. To those who believe the wing accomplished nothing–and this group includes many pilots–Messimer argues that while attempts to bomb the Japanese fleet proved futile because the PBYs were unsuitable for such a task, the wing's rescue and evacuation missions saved many lives. The airdales themselves were not so lucky. When Corregidor fell, nearly half of them were captured and many died in captivity.
Hunter-Killer
The pursuit of German U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic has long been considered one of the most exciting stories of World War II. This definitive study takes readers into the cockpits and onto the flight decks of the versatile and hardy U.S. escort carriers (CVEs) to tell of their vital, yet little-known contribution to the anti-U-boat campaign. Sailing apart from the Allied convoys, the CVE captains had complete freedom of action and frequently took their ships on «hunt and kill» missions against the enemy. The German submarines were allowed no respite and no place to relax without the fear of discovery.World War II historian William Y'Blood explains that in the eighteen months between the spring of 1943, when the escort carriers began to prowl the Atlantic, to November 1944, the average number of U-boats in daily operation was reduced from 108 to a mere 31. Though land-based aircraft, various support groups, and the convoy system itself helped win the Battle of the Atlantic, the escort carrier groups' influence was profound. In addition to documenting the escort carriers' exciting operational history, the author also traces the CVE's development and construction and examines its tactical and strategic uses.