Military Technology

Militaries with state-of-the-art information technology sometimes bog down in confusing conflicts. To understand why, it is important to understand the micro-foundations of military power in the information age - and this is exactly what Jon R. Lindsay's Information Technology and Military Power gives us. As Lindsay shows, digital systems now mediate almost every effort to gather, store, display, analyze, and communicate information in military organizations. He highlights how personnel now struggle with their own information systems, as much as with the enemy.

In 2014, the world witnessed the start of a mysterious series of cyberattacks. Targeting American utility companies, NATO, and electric grids in Eastern Europe, the strikes grew ever more brazen. They culminated in the summer of 2017, when the malware known as NotPetya was unleashed, penetrating, disrupting, and paralyzing some of the world's largest businesses—from drug manufacturers to software developers to shipping companies. At the attack's epicenter in Ukraine, ATMs froze. The railway and postal systems shut down. Hospitals went dark.

Since the 1930s, the scale of scientific endeavors has grown exponentially. The birth of Big Science can be traced to Berkeley, California, nearly nine decades ago, when a resourceful young scientist pondered his new invention and declared, "I'm going to be famous!" Ernest Orlando Lawrence's cyclotron would revolutionize nuclear physics, but that was only the beginning of its impact.This is the incredible story of how one invention changed the world and of the man principally responsible for it all. Michael Hiltzik tells the riveting full story here for the first time.

The definitive history of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon agency that has quietly shaped war and technology for nearly 60 years. Founded in 1958 in response to the launch of Sputnik, the agency's original mission was to create "the unimagined weapons of the future". Over the decades, DARPA has been responsible for countless inventions and technologies that extend well beyond military technology.

In this magnificent synthesis of military, technological, and social history, William H. McNeill explores a whole millennium of human upheaval and traces the path by which we have arrived at the frightening dilemmas that now confront us. McNeill moves with equal mastery from the crossbow - banned by the Church in 1139 as too lethal for Christians to use against one another - to the nuclear missile, from the sociological consequences of drill in the 17th century to the emergence of the military-industrial complex in the 20th.

Drones are transforming warfare through the use of artificial intelligence, drone swarms, and surveillance - leading to competition between the US, China, Israel, and Iran. Who will be the next drone superpower?

Retired from his fighting days, John Perry is now village ombudsman for a human colony on distant Huckleberry. With his wife, former Special Forces warrior Jane Sagan, he farms several acres, adjudicates local disputes, and enjoys watching his adopted daughter grow up. That is, until his and Jane's past reaches out to bring them back into the game — as leaders of a new human colony, to be peopled by settlers from all the major human worlds, for a deep political purpose that will put Perry and Sagan back in the thick of interstellar politics, betrayal, and war.

From the acclaimed author of The Nobel Prize comes this fascinating portrait of four of the greatest minds in the history of science and the impossible turning point they faced. As World War II wound down, and it became increasingly clear that the Allies would emerge victorious, Albert Einstein invited three close friends - all titans of contemporary science and philosophy - to his home at 112 Mercer Street in Princeton, New Jersey, to discuss what they loved best: science and philosophy.

The mysterious Kull have waged war on humanity and her colonies for more than a decade. Dropping out of the void, they wrought devastation upon colonies and planets across the stars, leaving a stunned under-strength Earth fleet scrambling for answers. Captain Thomas Parks was that answer. Leading the human fleet against the alien invaders, he stopped them at Gladius 9, creating a stalemate in the war and buying humanity precious time. And as the Valkyrie 4 launched from the Navis shipyards with Parks at the helm, the ship's technological advantages promised to end the war once and for all. ...

A new industrial revolution has begun. Like mechanization or electricity before it, artificial intelligence will touch every aspect of our lives—and cause profound disruptions in the balance of global power, especially among the AI superpowers: China, the United States, and Europe. Autonomous weapons expert Paul Scharre takes listeners inside the fierce competition to develop and implement this game-changing technology and dominate the future.

Faulkner's victory came at a terrible price. Driving back the Da’al’s initial attack has left the Mantis destroyed and her crew scattered across space. All hope now seems lost. And with the arrival of their new battle fleet, it seems that the Da’al are determined to push humanity to the very brink of extinction. Desperate to turn the tide, the remaining Marines are dispatched to Tigris where the discovery of a long lost alien technology may well provide them with the advantage they’re looking for. But it may already be too late. R.L.Giddings’ Silver Fleet Series is a masterclass...

Centuries ago the human race fought its first great war against an alien race - and lost. A tiny population of human beings fled to distant Safehold. Centuries later their descendants have forgotten their history; for them, life has been an eternal Middle Ages, ruled by the Church of God Awaiting, whose secret purpose is to prevent the reemergence of industrial civilization. But not all of Safehold's founders were onboard with this plan. Those dissidents left behind their own secret legacies.

Drone Wars: The Future of Conflict is a groundbreaking exploration of how unmanned systems are transforming the battlefield, shifting global power, and redefining the rules of war. From the Bronze Age to the nuclear era, history has demonstrated that revolutions in military technology have reshaped societies. Today, the rapid rise of drones—affordable, autonomous, and increasingly lethal—is the next evolution. Once the domain of superpowers, drone warfare has been democratized. Now, insurgents, terrorists, criminal cartels, and lone actors can wield capabilities once reserved for the ...

The virus now known as Stuxnet was unlike any other piece of malware built before: Rather than simply hijacking targeted computers or stealing information from them, it proved that a piece of code could escape the digital realm and wreak actual, physical destruction—in this case, on an Iranian nuclear facility.

Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein, author of Disaster Capitalism, uncovers a largely hidden world in a global investigation with secret documents, revealing interviews and on-the-ground reporting. This book shows in-depth, for the first time, how Palestine has become the perfect laboratory for the Israeli military-techno complex: surveillance, home demolitions, indefinite incarceration and brutality to the hi-tech tools that drive the 'Start-up Nation'.

Have you been yearning to master the use of your Baofeng radio, but can't seem to get the hang of it? Are you an outdoor enthusiast baffled by relentless bouts of inaccessible, faulty communication while in the wilderness? Or perhaps you're a prepper who comprehends the importance of reliable communication in any emergency scenario, but can't seem to unravel the intricacies of your Baofeng device? You aren't alone! In fact, a notable number of Baofeng owners grapple with setting up and optimizing their radio for maximum performance with minimal fuss. But it doesn't have to be that way ...

In the 1940s and '50s, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate velocities and plot trajectories, they didn't turn to male graduates. Rather, they recruited an elite group of young women who, with only pencil, paper, and mathematical prowess, transformed rocket design, helped bring about the first American satellites, and made the exploration of the solar system possible.

In this fascinating foray into the centuries-old relationship between science and military power, acclaimed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and writer-researcher Avis Lang examine how the methods and tools of astrophysics have been enlisted in the service of war. "The overlap is strong, and the knowledge flows in both directions," say the authors, because astrophysicists and military planners care about many of the same things: multi-spectral detection, ranging, tracking, imaging, high ground, nuclear fusion, and access to space. Tyson and Lang call it a "curiously complicit" alliance.

In December of 1938, a chemist in a German laboratory made a shocking discovery: When placed next to radioactive material, a Uranium atom split in two. That simple discovery launched a scientific race that spanned three continents. In Great Britain and the United States, Soviet spies worked their way into the scientific community; in Norway, a commando force slipped behind enemy lines to attack German heavy-water manufacturing; and deep in the desert, one brilliant group of scientists was hidden away at a remote site at Los Alamos.

Few people are aware that John Moses Browning - a tall, humble, cerebral man born in 1855 and raised as a Mormon in the American West - was the mind behind many of the world-changing firearms that dominated more than a century of conflict. He invented the design used in virtually all modern pistols, created the most popular hunting rifles and shotguns, and conceived the machine guns that proved decisive not just in World Wars I and II but nearly every major military action since. Yet few in America knew his name until he was into his 60s.