Why would highly skilled, well-trained pilots make errors that lead to accidents when they had safely completed many thousands of previous flights? The majority of all aviation accidents are attributed primarily to human error, but this is often misinterpreted as evidence of lack of skill, vigilance, or conscientiousness of the pilots. The Limits of Expertise is a fresh look at the causes of pilot error and aviation accidents, arguing that accidents can be understood only in the context of...

Is it possible for two combatants who possess equally strong air forces to conduct limited warfare by restraining air operations? In Restraining Air Power, Robert C. Owen and contributing authors aim to answer this question by providing theoretical and empirical assessments of restrained air warfare through five historical case studies since 1945. Through an objective analysis of the past, this collection evaluates the principles of escalation and escalation management in conventi...

In the distant future, somewhere in the galaxy, a world has evolved where each person has multiple bodies, cybernetics has abolished privacy, and individual and family success are reliant upon instantaneous evaluations of how well each member conforms to the rigid social system.Young Fift is an only child of the Staid gender, struggling to maintain zir position in the system while developing a friendship with the acclaimed bioengineer Shria: a controversial and int...

Sue Burke, author of Semiosis and Interference, gives listeners a new near-future, hard sf novel. Immunity Index blends Orphan Black with Contagion in a terrifying outbreak scenario.In a US facing growing food shortages, stark inequality, and a growing fascist government, three perfectly normal young women are about to find out that they share a great deal in common.Their creator, the gifted geneticist Peng, made...

A global pandemic finds millions swarming across the U.S. border. Major American cities are leveled by black-market nukes. China’s growing civil unrest ignites a global showdown. Pakistan’s collapse leads to a hunt for its nuclear weapons. What if the worst that could happen actually happens? How will we respond? Are we prepared?These are the questions that Andrew F. Krepinevich asks—and answers—in this timely and often chilling book. As a military expert and consultant, Krepinevic...

A fascinating discussion of the development of counterinsurgency by experts in the field.Throughout history armies of occupation and civil power have been faced with the challenges of insurgency. British and American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan has highlighted this form of conflict in the modern world.Armies have had to adopt new doctrines and tactics to deal with the problems of insurgency and diverse counterinsurgency strategies have been develope...

A searing indictment of US strategy in Afghanistan from a distinguished military leader and West Point military historian—"A remarkable book" ( National Review).In 2008, Col. Gian Gentile exposed a growing rift among military intellectuals with an article titled "Misreading the Surge Threatens U.S. Army's Conventional Capabilities," that appeared in World Politics Review. While the years of US strategy in Afghanistan had been dominated by the doct...

From one of the most important army officers of his generation, a memoir of the revolution in warfare he helped lead, in combat and in WashingtonWhen John Nagl was an army tank commander in the first Gulf War of 1991, fresh out of West Point and Oxford, he could already see that America’s military superiority meant that the age of conventional combat was nearing an end. Nagl was an early convert to the view that America’s greatest future threats would come from asymmetric ...

This one-volume anthology provides a comprehensive analysis of the role that air power has played in military conflicts over the past century. Comprising sixteen essays penned by a global cadre of leading military experts, A History of Air Warfare chronologically examines the utility of air power from the First World War to the second Lebanon war, campaign by campaign. Each essay lays out the objectives, events, and key players of the conflict in question, reviews the role of air power in the...

What influences have shaped air power since human flight became a reality more than a hundred years ago? Global Air Power provides insight into the evolution of air power theory and practice by examining the experience of six of the worlds largest air forcesthose of the United Kingdom, the United States, Israel, Russia, India, and Chinaand of representative smaller air forces in Pacific Asia, Latin America, and continental Europe. The chapters, written by highly regarded scholars and m...

Since the end of World War II, there have been 181 insurgencies around the world. In fact, most modern warfare occurs in the form of insurgencies, including in such high-profile countries as Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and Ukraine. However, in spite of their prevalence, we still know relatively little about how insurgencies function. With more than three dozen violent insurgencies currently taking place today, a deeper understanding of insurgent groups is more important than ever. In ...

This book examines the long, complex experience of American involvement in irregular warfare. It begins with the American Revolution in 1776 and chronicles big and small irregular wars for the next two and a half centuries. What is readily apparent in dirty wars is that failure is painfully tangible while success is often amorphous. Successfully fighting these wars often entails striking a critical balance between military victory and politics. America's status as a democracy only serves t...