explains how the US military transformation failed in the post-Cold war era Harvey Sapolsky is a leading defence scholar in the US will be of interest to students of strategic studies, defence studies, military studies, US politics and security studies in general

This book examines how the US Army rebuilt itself after the Vietnam War and how this has effected US intervention policy after the Cold War.

Trillions for Military Technology explains why the weapons purchased by the U.S. Department of Defense cost so much, why it takes decades to get them into production even as innovation in the civilian economy becomes ever more frenetic, and why some of those weapons don't work very well despite expenditures of many billions of dollars. It also explains what do about these problems. The author argues that the internal politics of the armed services make weapons acquisition almost unmanageable. Solutions require empowering civilian officials and reforms that will bring choice of weapons "into the sunshine" of public debate.

A military's ability to adapt its organization, doctrine, and technology strategy to meet the threats of its time influences the state's capacity to maintain great power status. This thesis uses a historical overview of military innovation among great powers throughout history to draw lessons for the U.S. military today. In this heuristic analysis, it is determined that great powers that integrated between and among their various elements of national power were able to maintain their positions better than those that did not. The study transitions from a descriptive to a prescriptive mode, concluding with the caution that, if the U.S. military does not begin to transform itself from a Cold War organization to an adaptable, resilient force for the future, it could hasten America's loss of global power. Measures that the U.S. military should take to innovate organizationally, doctrinally and in terms of technology strategy are prescribed. Finally, and most importantly, this study finds it essential to foster a climate and institutional culture receptive to innovation.

How and when do military innovations take place? Do they proceed differently during times of peace and times of war? In Winning the Next War, Stephen Peter Rosen argues that armies and navies are not forever doomed to "fight the last war." Rather, they are able to respond to shifts in the international strategic situation. He also discusses the changing relationship between the civilian innovator and the military bureaucrat. In peacetime, Rosen finds, innovation has been the product of analysis and the politics of military promotion, in a process that has slowly but successfully built military capabilities critical to American military success. In wartime, by contrast, innovation has been constrained by the fog of war and the urgency of combat needs. Rosen draws his principal evidence from U.S. military policy between 1905 and 1960, though he also discusses the British army's experience with the battle tank during World War I.

A military's ability to adapt its organization, doctrine, and technology strategy to meet the threats of its time influences the state's capacity to maintain great power status. This thesis uses a historical overview of military innovation among great powers throughout history to draw lessons for the U.S. military today. In this heuristic analysis, it is determined that great powers that integrated between and among their various elements of national power were able to maintain their positions better than those that did not. The study transitions from a descriptive to a prescriptive mode, concluding with the caution that, if the U.S. military does not begin to transform itself from a Cold War organization to an adaptable, resilient force for the future, it could hasten America's loss of global power. Measures that the U.S. military should take to innovate organizationally, doctrinally and in terms of technology strategy are prescribed. Finally, and most importantly, this study finds it essential to foster a climate and institutional culture receptive to innovation.

This book provides an authoritative account of how the US, British, and French armies have transformed since the end of the Cold War. All three armies have sought to respond to changes in their strategic and socio-technological environments by developing more expeditionary capable and networked forces. Drawing on extensive archival research, hundreds of interviews, and unprecedented access to official documents, the authors examine both the process and the outcomes of army transformation, and ask how organizational interests, emerging ideas, and key entrepreneurial leaders interact in shaping the direction of military change. They also explore how programs of army transformation change over time, as new technologies moved from research to development, and as lessons from operations were absorbed. In framing these issues, they draw on military innovation scholarship and, in addressing them, produce findings with general relevance for the study of how militaries innovate.

No nation in recent history has placed greater emphasis on the role of technology in planning and waging war than the United States. In World War II the wholesale mobilization of American science and technology culminated in the detonation of the atomic bomb. Competition with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, combined with the U.S. Navy's culture of distributed command and the rapid growth of information technology, spawned the concept of network-centric warfare. And America's post-Cold War conflicts in Iraq, the former Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan have highlighted America's edge. From the atom bomb to the spy satellites of the Cold War, the strategic limitations of the Vietnam War, and the technological triumphs of the Gulf war, Thomas G. Mahnken follows the development and integration of new technologies into the military and emphasizes their influence on the organization, mission, and culture of the armed services. In some cases, advancements in technology have forced different branches of the military to develop competing or superior weaponry, but more often than not the armed services have molded technology to suit their own purposes, remaining resilient in the face of technological challenges. Mahnken concludes with an examination of the reemergence of the traditional American way of war, which uses massive force to engage the enemy. Tying together six decades of debate concerning U.S. military affairs, he discusses how the armed forces might exploit the unique opportunities of the information revolution in the future.

Innovation and the Arms Race investigates the causes and mechanisms of the "technological arms race" between the United States and the Soviet Union. Challenging the commonly held notion that Soviet weapons innovation processes simply mirror those of the United States, Matthew Evangelista shows that the United States usually leads in introducing new military technology, while the Soviets typically react to American initiatives. Evangelista bases his study of pivotal nuclear weapons development decisions on a variety of US and USSR primary sources, including the memoirs of weapons designers and scientists, declassified intelligence analyses, Soviet Academy of Science documents, and Nikita Khruschev's taped reminiscences. He finds that in the United States, impetus for innovation comes "from the bottom" at the initiative of corporate or government researchers and military officials, whereas the centralized Soviet system produces innovations "from the top" in response to foreign developments. A revelatory analysis of US military policy, Soviet-American relations, and weaponry development, Innovation and the Arms Race bears lessons for the study of great power competition and military innovation today.