Military Technology

When we think about the future of war, the military and Washington and most everyone gets it backwards. We think in terms of buying single military systems, such as fighter jets or aircraft carriers. And when we think about modernizing those systems, we think about buying better versions of the same things. But what really matters is not the single system but "the battle network"—the collection of sensors and shooters that enables a military to find an enemy system, target it, and attack it.

Bob Lazar was a brilliant young physicist that found himself employed at a top-secret facility in the middle of the desert outside Las Vegas. Under the watchful eye of the government elite, he is tasked with understanding an exotic propulsion system being used by an advanced aerospace vehicle he is told came from outer space. The stressful work and long, odd hours start to wear on Bob and he becomes concerned for his safety. He tells his wife and a couple close friends about what he's doing in the desert, and his employers find out and are furious.

This Economist book describes emerging military technologies and places them in the larger context of today's politics, diplomacy, business and social issues. It shows how efforts to win wars or keep the peace are driving enormous and multifold technological advances. Broadly speaking, defence technologies will continue to provide enormous advantages to advanced, Western armed forces. For anyone who wants to know just how smart the global war, defence and intelligence machine is, this will be revealing and fascinating reading.

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.

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.

Rise of the Gender Clones in a World With Only Men Jon Berringer is your typical male in the year 2240 – smart, comfortable, and very confused by the sudden announcement that females will be returning. After females stopped being born in 2042, the world quickly became dominated by the male population. At some point, someone realized no new women were being born, and that's when the New World Order Initiative began. After the last female on the planet died in 2173 at the age of 131, the program to fix the problem took off in earnest as it was realized that with no women on the planet, the ...

The Cynefin framework provides a method to analyze systems and can help prevent the application of the same decision-making process to different situations. According to the framework, disorder is the condition where one is unaware of a system’s domain. The domains, or quadrants, are identified as chaotic, complex, complicated, and obvious. As one comes to identify the dominant system, the framework offers a mental tool to guide decision-making. It also helps illuminate the impact if the system bridges the gap between one of the other domains. For example, obvious or complex systems could...

Larry James is the best and everyone knows it. What does Larry do? That is harder to explain. Intervention is an emerging technology built upon a new but incomplete understanding of neurological investigations into the relationship between the organic brain and the construct we all too casually call: the mind. Intervention is as much art as science and people like Larry can change your mind, about anything, to anything. When he is approached by a Mr. Smith, who wants to push the implementation of this technology into new arenas, Larry enlists the aid of his two closest confidants: Vance and...

Jeremy Black addresses not only firepower, but also power projection and technologies of logistics, command, and control. Examining military technologies in their historical context and the present centered on the revolution in Military Affairs and Military Transformation, Black then forecasts possible future trends.