During the first half of the 1970s, two new fighter aircraft entered operational service in the United States: The Navy’s Grumman F-14 Tomcat and the Air Force’s McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle. These two aircraft were part of the backbone of the tactical air power of the United States; their introduction was accompanied by comprehensive reforms in pilot training as well as new technologies and weapon systems. In addition to the tactical significance of the two aircraft as innovative fighting...

This book recounts the history of the US Special Operations Forces (SOF) after the failure of Operation Eagle Claw in 1980, examining the events that led to and followed a series of organizational and operational reforms in the American military system.Operation Eagle Claw’s damage to America’s image was a critical moment in American miliary history that extended beyond the exclusive purview of the military. The establishment of the Special Operations Command in 1987 would mark the...

The Gulf of Tonkin: The United States and the Escalation in the Vietnam War analyzes the events that led to the escalation of the conflict in Vietnam and increased American involvement.On August 4, 1964, the captains of two American destroyers, the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy, reported that their ships were being attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. This report came on top of a previous report by the captain of the USS Maddox, indica...

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-Col...

They are floating cities with crews of thousands. They are the linchpins of any military strategy, for they provide what has become the key to every battle fought since World War I: air superiority. The mere presence of a U.S. naval carrier in a region is an automatic display of strength that sends a message no potential enemy can ignore. Now, Tom Clancy welcomes you aboard for a detailed look at how these floating behemoths function. With his trademark style and eye for d...

The founder of Blackwater offers the gripping true story of the world’s most controversial military contractor.In 1997, former Navy SEAL Erik Prince started a business that would recruit civilians for the riskiest security jobs in the world. As Blackwater’s reputation grew, demand for its services escalated, and its men eventually completed nearly 100,000 missions for both the Bush and Obama administrations.It was a huge success except for one problem: Blac...

David Halberstam’s masterpiece, the defining history of the making of the Vietnam tragedy, with a new Foreword by Senator John McCain."A rich, entertaining, and profound reading experience.”—The New York TimesUsing portraits of America’s flawed policy makers and accounts of the forces that drove them, The Best and the Brightest reckons magnificently with the most important abiding question of our country’s recent history: ...

In a tour de force, prize-winning New York Times reporter C.J. Chivers traces the invention of the assault rifle, following the miniaturization of rapid-fire arms from the American Civil War, through WWI, Vietnam, to present day Afghanistan when Kalashnikovs and their knock-offs number as many as 100 million—enough for one out of seventy people on earth.At a secret arms-design contest in Stalin’s Soviet Union, army technicians submitted a stubby rifle with...

Told through the eyes of current and former Navy SEALs, EYES ON TARGET is an inside account of some of the most harrowing missions in American history-including the mission to kill Osama bin Laden and the mission that wasn't, the deadly attack on the US diplomatic outpost in Benghazi where a retired SEAL sniper with a small team held off one hundred terrorists while his repeated radio calls for help went unheeded.The book contains incredible accounts of major SEAL operations-from t...

Hailed as a "pithy and compelling account of an intensely relevant topic" (Kirkus Reviews), this wide-ranging volume offers a superb account of a key moment in modern U.S. and world history. Drawing upon the latest research in archives in China, Russia, and Vietnam, Mark Lawrence creates an extraordinary, panoramic view of all sides of the war. His narrative begins well before American forces set foot in Vietnam, delving into French colonialism's contribution to the 1945 Vietnamese revolut...

Featuring recently declassified material from government departments that had yet to be published in the mass media, this is a ground-breaking analysis of the largest mobilization of Special Forces in recent history.Intelligence specialist Leigh Neville identifies, describes and illustrates the Special Operations Forces (SOF) of the British, American and other Coalition forces committed to the 'War on Terror' in Afghanistan since 2001, providing a fascinating insig...

“John Carney is one of the few heroes I have.”–LT. COL. L. H. “BUCKY” BURRUSS, USA (Ret.)Founding member and Deputy Commander of Delta ForceWhen the U.S. Air Force decided to create an elite “special tactics” team in the late 1970s to work in conjunction with special-operations forces combating terrorists and hijackers and defusing explosive international emergencies, John T. Carney was the man they turned to. Since then Carney and the U.S. Air Force Special Tactical ...