Strike warfare is a term that is rarely used in the popular media even though reports of conflicts often describe its application or effects. Those brief snippets of information seldom provide a complete picture of what is happening at the time, and they almost never explain the operational or technical background that influences how such actions occur. This leaves the average reader or viewer with an information void, a gap in understanding. This book is intended to fill that gap. It does so in a logical and methodical fashion, building the picture piece by piece using easily understandable language. It begins with a discussion of the more newsworthy side of the subject, strike warfare operations. All of the key elements are addressed: targets, defenses, resources, and the several steps required to prosecute an attack. The book’s goal is to eliminate the uncertainty, the mystery and the outright fiction that sometimes exists in popular versions of the story. The second half of the book deals with an even less understood part of the subject, the development of strike weapons. The average citizen may occasionally hear of cost overruns, development test failures or some other negative aspect of military development programs, but there is hardly any background information available to the American taxpayer on how such programs function in general. Again, the book aims to correct a deficiency with respect to an accurate account of how strike weapons are actually developed. The entire development and life cycle is described, step by step, at the summary level. The author then closes with some thoughts about lessons learned and trends for the future. This is recommended reading for anyone with an interest in or a connection with strike warfare or strike weapons development. It should prove helpful to military or civilian newcomers to the field, members of the news media, and legislators or members of their staff dealing with military matters. But first and foremost, it was written to provide the average American taxpayer a better understanding of an important and powerful military capability."

This book outlines how to reorganize the U.S. Army into a fully 2 and 3-Dimensional maneuver capable, ground force with terrain-agile, armored fighting vehicles sized to rapidly deploy by fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft to the scene of world conflicts and strike at the heart of freedom's enemies. The plan to build the Army into Air-Mech-Strike Forces, exploiting emerging information-age technologies, as well as America's supremacy in aircraft and helicopter delivery systems---at the lowest cost to the taxpayers, is described in detail. These Army warfighting organizations, using existing and some newly purchased equipment, will shape the battlefield to America's advantage, preserving the peace before it is lost; if not, then winning fights that must be fought quickly. The dangerous world we live in moves by the speed of the AIR, and the 21st Century U.S. Army 2D/3D combat team will dominate this medium by Air-Mech-Strike!

This is a book about strategy and war fighting. It contains 11 essays which examine topics such as military operations against a well-armed rogue state, the potential of parallel warfare strategy for different kinds of states, the revolutionary potential of information warfare, the lethal possibilities of biological warfare and the elements of an ongoing revolution in military affairs. The purpose of the book is to focus attention on the operational problems, enemy strategies and threat that will confront U.S. national security decision makers in the twenty-first century.

“[Singer's] enthusiasm becomes infectious . . . Wired for War is a book of its time: this is strategy for the Facebook generation.” —Foreign Affairs “An engrossing picture of a new class of weapon that may revolutionize future wars. . .” —Kirkus Reviews P. W. Singer explores the great­est revolution in military affairs since the atom bomb: the dawn of robotic warfare We are on the cusp of a massive shift in military technology that threatens to make real the stuff of I, Robot and The Terminator. Blending historical evidence with interviews of an amaz­ing cast of characters, Singer shows how technology is changing not just how wars are fought, but also the politics, economics, laws, and the ethics that surround war itself. Travelling from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan to modern-day "skunk works" in the midst of suburbia, Wired for War will tantalise a wide readership, from military buffs to policy wonks to gearheads.

"This book, written by members of the Chief of Staff of the Army's Strategic Studies Group, takes an innovative approach to determining how the United States can counter extremist groups and engage in great power competition in the twenty first century. After proposing that the answer lies in switching the focus of current US strategy from the physical domain on which conflict occurs to the social, political, and cultural networks that comprise the human domain in which it occurs, it develops a new operating concept for conducting operations within that domain. This is an important book for those in security studies and international relations."--Provided by publisher.

These essays by nuclear policy experts provide “a speculative but serious and well-informed journey through a variety of scenarios and contingencies” (Foreign Affairs). Recent decades have seen a slow but steady increase in nuclear armed states, and in the seemingly less constrained policy goals of some of the newer “rogue” states in the international system. The authors of On Limited Nuclear War in the 21st Century argue that a time may come when one of these states makes the conscious decision that using a nuclear weapon against the United States, its allies, or forward deployed forces in the context of a crisis or a regional conventional conflict may be in its interests. They assert that we are unprepared for these types of limited nuclear wars and that it is urgent we rethink the theory, policy, and implementation of force related to our approaches to this type of engagement. Together they critique Cold War doctrine on limited nuclear war and consider a number of the key concepts that should govern our approach to limited nuclear conflict in the future. These include identifying the factors likely to lead to limited nuclear war; examining the geopolitics of future conflict scenarios that might lead to small-scale nuclear use; and assessing strategies for crisis management and escalation control. Finally, they consider a range of strategies and operational concepts for countering, controlling, or containing limited nuclear war. “A series of trenchant essays that deconstruct a critical national security challenge that most of us wish did not exist. Assembling a star-studded cast of scholars, analysts, and policy practitioners, Larsen and Kartchner have produced some of the most important new thinking on an old topic.” —H-Diplo

As American and coalition troops fight the first battles of this new century -- from Afghanistan to Yemen to the Philippines to Iraq -- they do so in ways never before seen. Until recently, information war was but one piece of a puzzle, more than a sideshow in war but far less than the sum total of the game. Today, however, we find information war revolutionizing combat, from top to bottom. Gone are the advantages of fortified positions -- nothing is impregnable any longer. Gone is the reason to create an overwhelming mass of troops -- now, troop concentrations merely present easier targets. Instead, stealth, swarming, and "zapping" (precision strikes on individuals or equipment) are the order of the day, based on superior information and lightning-fast decision-making. In many ways, modern warfare is information warfare. Bruce Berkowitz's explanation of how information war revolutionized combat and what it means for our soldiers could not be better timed. As Western forces wage war against terrorists and their supporters, in actions large and small, on several continents, The New Face of War explains how they fight and how they will win or lose. There are four key dynamics to the new warfare: asymmetric threats, in which even the strongest armies may suffer from at least one Achilles' heel; information-technology competition, in which advantages in computers and communications are crucial; the race of decision cycles, in which the first opponent to process and react to information effectively is almost certain to win; and network organization, in which fluid arrays of combat forces can spontaneously organize in multiple ways to fight any given opponent at any time. America's use of networked, elite ground forces, in combination with precision-guided bombing from manned and unmanned flyers, turned Afghanistan from a Soviet graveyard into a lopsided field of American victory. Yet we are not invulnerable, and the same technology that we used in Kuwait in 1991 is now available to anyone with a credit card and access to the Internet. Al Qaeda is adept in the new model of war, and has searched long and hard for weaknesses in our defenses. Will we be able to stay ahead of its thinking? In Iraq, Saddam's army is in no position to defeat its enemies -- but could it defend Baghdad? As the world anxiously considers these and other questions of modern war, Bruce Berkowitz offers many answers and a framework for understanding combat that will never again resemble the days of massive marches on fortress-like positions. The New Face of War is a crucial guidebook for reading the headlines from across our troubled planet.

The Navy has put forth a new construct for its strike forces that enables more effective forward deterrence and rapid response. A key aspect of this construct is the need for flexible, adaptive command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems. To assist development of this capability, the Navy asked the NRC to examine C4ISR for carrier, expeditionary, and strike and missile defense strike groups, and for expeditionary strike forces. This report provides an assessment of C4ISR capabilities for each type of strike group; recommendations for C4ISR architecture for use in major combat operations; promising technology trends; and an examination of organizational improvements that can enable the recommended architecture.