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Author: James G. Burton Publisher: US Naval Institute Press ISBN: 9781612516004 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
From the late 1960s through the mid-1980s, a small band of military activists waged war against corruption in the Pentagon, challenging a system they believed squandered the public's money and trust. The book examines the movement and its proponents and describes how the system responded to the criticisms and efforts to change accepted practices and entrenched ways of thinking. The author, an air force colonel and part of the movement, worked in the pentagon for fourteen years. He presents a view of the Department of Defense that only an insider could offer. He exposes serious flaws in the military policy-making process, particularly in weapons development and procurement. The details he gives on the unrelenting push for high-tech weapons, despite their ineffectiveness and extraordinary cost-overruns, provide a strong case for the charge of ethical bankruptcy. The second half of the book deals with the author's attempts to get frontline equipment tested under combat conditions. For the first time, readers learn the nasty details of his battle with the army over line-fire testing of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle--a battle that he eventually won, leading to the personnel carrier's redesign and the saving of many lives. Never reluctant to name names and reveal details, James G. Burton presents a forceful case. And his revelations offer insights not found elsewhere into the motivations and actions of the people who wield power from within. Nor does he stop at the walls of the Pentagon. In his epilogue he tells what happened in the field during the final hours of the Gulf War that allowed Hussein's elite Republican Guard to escape. Now back in print after having inspired a feature HBO film, this explosive account of insider corruption is sure to serve policy-makers for generations to come.
Author: James G. Burton Publisher: US Naval Institute Press ISBN: 9781612516004 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
From the late 1960s through the mid-1980s, a small band of military activists waged war against corruption in the Pentagon, challenging a system they believed squandered the public's money and trust. The book examines the movement and its proponents and describes how the system responded to the criticisms and efforts to change accepted practices and entrenched ways of thinking. The author, an air force colonel and part of the movement, worked in the pentagon for fourteen years. He presents a view of the Department of Defense that only an insider could offer. He exposes serious flaws in the military policy-making process, particularly in weapons development and procurement. The details he gives on the unrelenting push for high-tech weapons, despite their ineffectiveness and extraordinary cost-overruns, provide a strong case for the charge of ethical bankruptcy. The second half of the book deals with the author's attempts to get frontline equipment tested under combat conditions. For the first time, readers learn the nasty details of his battle with the army over line-fire testing of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle--a battle that he eventually won, leading to the personnel carrier's redesign and the saving of many lives. Never reluctant to name names and reveal details, James G. Burton presents a forceful case. And his revelations offer insights not found elsewhere into the motivations and actions of the people who wield power from within. Nor does he stop at the walls of the Pentagon. In his epilogue he tells what happened in the field during the final hours of the Gulf War that allowed Hussein's elite Republican Guard to escape. Now back in print after having inspired a feature HBO film, this explosive account of insider corruption is sure to serve policy-makers for generations to come.
Author: Rosa Brooks Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1476777861 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 448
Book Description
Inside secure command centers, military officials make life and death decisions-- but the Pentagon also offers food courts, banks, drugstores, florists, and chocolate shops. It is rather symbolic of the way that the U.S. military has become our one-stop-shopping solution to global problems. Brooks traces this seismic shift in how America wages war, and provides a rallying cry for action as we undermine the values and rules that keep our world from sliding toward chaos.
Author: Steve Vogel Publisher: Random House ISBN: 1588367010 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 674
Book Description
The creation of the Pentagon in seventeen whirlwind months during World War II is one of the great construction feats in American history, involving a tremendous mobilization of manpower, resources, and minds. In astonishingly short order, Brigadier General Brehon B. Somervell conceived and built an institution that ranks with the White House, the Vatican, and a handful of other structures as symbols recognized around the world. Now veteran military reporter Steve Vogel reveals for the first time the remarkable story of the Pentagon’s construction, from it’s dramatic birth to its rebuilding after the September 11 attack. At the center of the story is the tempestuous but courtly Somervell–“dynamite in a Tiffany box,” as he was once described. In July 1941, the Army construction chief sprang the idea of building a single, huge headquarters that could house the entire War Department, then scattered in seventeen buildings around Washington. Somervell ordered drawings produced in one weekend and, despite a firestorm of opposition, broke ground two months later, vowing that the building would be finished in little more than a year. Thousands of workers descended on the site, a raffish Virginia neighborhood known as Hell’s Bottom, while an army of draftsmen churned out designs barely one step ahead of their execution. Seven months later the first Pentagon employees skirted seas of mud to move into the building and went to work even as construction roared around them. The colossal Army headquarters helped recast Washington from a sleepy southern town into the bustling center of a reluctant empire. Vivid portraits are drawn of other key figures in the drama, among them Franklin D. Roosevelt, the president who fancied himself an architect; Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall, both desperate for a home for the War Department as the country prepared for battle; Colonel Leslie R. Groves, the ruthless force of nature who oversaw the Pentagon’s construction (as well as the Manhattan Project to create an atomic bomb); and John McShain, the charming and dapper builder who used his relationship with FDR to help land himself the contract for the biggest office building in the world. The Pentagon’s post-World War II history is told through its critical moments, including the troubled birth of the Department of Defense during the Cold War, the tense days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the tumultuous 1967 protest against the Vietnam War. The pivotal attack on September 11 is related with chilling new detail, as is the race to rebuild the damaged Pentagon, a restoration that echoed the spirit of its creation. This study of a single enigmatic building tells a broader story of modern American history, from the eve of World War II to the new wars of the twenty-first century. Steve Vogel has crafted a dazzling work of military social history that merits comparison with the best works of David Halberstam or David McCullough. Like its namesake, The Pentagon is a true landmark.
Author: John Prados Publisher: ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 272
Book Description
Inside the Pentagon Papers addresses legal and moral issues that resonate today as debates continue over government secrecy and democracy's requisite demand for truthfully informed citizens. In the process, it also shows how a closer study of this signal event can illuminate questions of government responsibility in any era. When Daniel Ellsberg leaked a secret government study about the Vietnam War to the press in 1971, he set off a chain of events that culminated in one of the most important First Amendment decisions in American legal history. That affair is now part of history, but the story behind the case has much to tell us about government secrecy and the public's right to know. Commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the Pentagon Papers were assembled by a team of analysts who investigated every aspect of the war. Ellsberg, a member of the team, was horrified by the government's public lies about the war - discrepancies with reality that were revealed by the report's secret findings. His leak of the report to the New York Times and Washington Post triggered the Nixon administration's heavy-handed attempt to halt publication of their stories, which in turn le
Author: James Carroll Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ISBN: 9780618872015 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 696
Book Description
An analysis of the Pentagon, the military, and their vast, frequently hidden influence on American life argues that the Pentagon has, since its inception, operated beyond the control of any force in government or society.
Author: Dale Roy Herspring Publisher: ISBN: Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 278
Book Description
A highly critical but nonpartisan assessment of the controversial former Defense Secretary as told by one of the leading experts on civil-military relations. Focuses on Rumsfeld's notoriously domineering leadership style, flawed vision for transforming the military, and failures in the Iraq War.
Author: James Perry Stevenson Publisher: US Naval Institute Press ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 474
Book Description
Did the U.S. Navy avoid Congress's explicit direction to "navalize" the winning design in a flyoff competition - by lying to Congress with the argument that the winner was not carrier capable - and then develop the losing aircraft into an even worse fighter for its carrier squadrons? To find the answer James Stevenson, an experienced aviation writer, dug through government files and interviewed key players to present this hard-hitting, behind-the-scenes account of the development of one of the Navy's current front-line aircraft. His investigation exposes the politics of Pentagon weapons procurement, a process that pits service against service, the military against Congress, admirals against generals, pilots against engineers, hard liners against reformers. This book provides a developmental history of the F-18 Hornet from drawing board to its results in Desert Storm. It is the story of a multi-billion-dollar aircraft-design war between those military officers who insist that America's interests will be protected best by sophisticated aircraft, even if America can afford fewer of them, and a group known as the "Fighter Mafia", who claim that larger numbers have always won in warfare and that for equal dollars America can only produce greater numbers if each one is less sophisticated. He shows that by picking the YF-17 - and renaming the F-17 as the F-18 - over the clearly superior YF-16, the Navy antagonized the Air Force, Congress, and its own F-14 community, and sparked a major legal battle. Undeterred, the Navy took the light, cheap YF-17 and loaded it with technology and weight, which produced an F-18 that has less maneuverability, less acceleration, a range no better than the1952-vintage A-4, and costs almost three times as much as the F-16. From its first flight in 1978, the F-18 performance continued to degrade. Nevertheless, in 1992 the Navy asked for additional money to modify the F-18 as the F-18E/F. This request was in reality funding for a brand-new aircraft, which Stevenson calls the F-19, designed to get back to the original requirements and help bail out the financially troubled McDonnell Douglas. In this highly readable study, Stevenson takes the reader into the Pentagon's corridors of power, where test results are distorted, history rewritten, and requirements changed to match aircraft performance, and the public's trust and treasure squandered. Fascinating yet sobering, The Pentagon Paradox will appeal to everyone interested in the military establishment, the future of U.S. forces, and how tax dollars are spent.
Author: Neta C. Crawford Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262371928 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 393
Book Description
How the Pentagon became the world’s largest single greenhouse gas emitter and why it’s not too late to break the link between national security and fossil fuel consumption. The military has for years (unlike many politicians) acknowledged that climate change is real, creating conditions so extreme that some military officials fear future climate wars. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Defense—military forces and DOD agencies—is the largest single energy consumer in the United States and the world’s largest institutional greenhouse gas emitter. In this eye-opening book, Neta Crawford traces the U.S. military’s growing consumption of energy and calls for a reconceptualization of foreign policy and military doctrine. Only such a rethinking, she argues, will break the link between national security and fossil fuels. The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War shows how the U.S. economy and military together have created a deep and long-term cycle of economic growth, fossil fuel use, and dependency. This cycle has shaped U.S. military doctrine and, over the past fifty years, has driven the mission to protect access to Persian Gulf oil. Crawford shows that even as the U.S. military acknowledged and adapted to human-caused climate change, it resisted reporting its own greenhouse gas emissions. Examining the idea of climate change as a “threat multiplier” in national security, she argues that the United States faces more risk from climate change than from lost access to Persian Gulf oil—or from most military conflicts. The most effective way to cut military emissions, Crawford suggests provocatively, is to rethink U.S. grand strategy, which would enable the United States to reduce the size and operations of the military.
Author: James G Burton Publisher: Naval Institute Press ISBN: 1612513697 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 212
Book Description
From the late 1960s through the mid-1980s, a small band of military activists waged war against corruption in the Pentagon, challenging a system they believed squandered the public’s money and trust. The book examines the movement and its proponents and describes how the system responded to the criticisms and efforts to change accepted practices and entrenched ways of thinking. The author, an air force colonel and part of the movement, worked in the pentagon for fourteen years. He presents a view of the Department of Defense that only an insider could offer. He exposes serious flaws in the military policy-making process, particularly in weapons development and procurement. The details he gives on the unrelenting push for high-tech weapons, despite their ineffectiveness and extraordinary cost-overruns, provide a strong case for the charge of ethical bankruptcy. The second half of the book deals with the author’s attempts to get frontline equipment tested under combat conditions. For the first time, readers learn the nasty details of his battle with the army over line-fire testing of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle—a battle that he eventually won, leading to the personnel carrier’s redesign and the saving of many lives. Never reluctant to name names and reveal details, James G. Burton presents a forceful case. And his revelations offer insights not found elsewhere into the motivations and actions of the people who wield power from within. Nor does he stop at the walls of the Pentagon. In his epilogue he tells what happened in the field during the final hours of the Gulf War that allowed Hussein’s elite Republican Guard to escape. Now back in print after having inspired a feature HBO film, this explosive account of insider corruption is sure to serve policy-makers for generations to come.
Author: Sharon Weinberger Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 0804169721 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 498
Book Description
The definitive history of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon agency that has quietly shaped war and technology for nearly sixty 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. Sharon Weinberger gives us a riveting account of DARPA’s successes and failures, its remarkable innovations, and its wild-eyed schemes. We see how the threat of nuclear Armageddon sparked investment in computer networking, leading to the Internet, as well as to a proposal to power a missile-destroying particle beam by draining the Great Lakes. We learn how DARPA was responsible during the Vietnam War for both Agent Orange and the development of the world’s first armed drones, and how after 9/11 the agency sparked a national controversy over surveillance with its data-mining research. And we see how DARPA’s success with self-driving cars was followed by disappointing contributions to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Weinberger has interviewed more than one hundred former Pentagon officials and scientists involved in DARPA’s projects—many of whom have never spoken publicly about their work with the agency—and pored over countless declassified records from archives around the country, documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, and exclusive materials provided by sources. The Imagineers of War is a compelling and groundbreaking history in which science, technology, and politics collide.
Author: James G. Burton
Author: James G. Burton
Author: Rosa Brooks
Author: Steve Vogel
Author: John Prados
Author: James Carroll
Author: Dale Roy Herspring
Author: James Perry Stevenson
Author: Neta C. Crawford
Author: James G Burton
Author: Sharon Weinberger