The $5 Billion Misunderstanding

The $5 Billion Misunderstanding PDF Author: James Perry Stevenson
Publisher: US Naval Institute Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 520

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Book Description
Examines how and why the A-12 acquisition program fell from a place of honor to one of derision and scandal.

The $5 Billion Misunderstanding

The $5 Billion Misunderstanding PDF Author: James Perry Stevenson
Publisher: US Naval Institute Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 520

Get Book Here

Book Description
Examines how and why the A-12 acquisition program fell from a place of honor to one of derision and scandal.

Misunderstanding the Internet

Misunderstanding the Internet PDF Author: James Curran
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317443519
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
The growth of the internet has been spectacular. There are now more than 3 billion internet users across the globe, some 40 per cent of the world’s population. The internet’s meteoric rise is a phenomenon of enormous significance for the economic, political and social life of contemporary societies. However, much popular and academic writing about the internet continues to take a celebratory view, assuming that the internet’s potential will be realised in essentially positive and transformative ways. This was especially true in the euphoric moment of the mid-1990s, when many commentators wrote about the internet with awe and wonderment. While this moment may be over, its underlying technocentrism – the belief that technology determines outcomes – lingers on and, with it, a failure to understand the internet in its social, economic and political contexts. Misunderstanding the Internet is a short introduction, encompassing the history, sociology, politics and economics of the internet and its impact on society. This expanded and updated second edition is a polemical, sociologically and historically informed guide to the key claims that have been made about the online world. It aims to challenge both popular myths and existing academic orthodoxies that surround the internet.

The Secret Sentry

The Secret Sentry PDF Author: Matthew M. Aid
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 160819096X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
Presents a history of the agency, from its inception in 1945, to its role in the Cold War, to its controversial advisory position at the time of the Bush administration's search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, shortly before the invasion of 2003.

The Imagineers of War

The Imagineers of War PDF Author: Sharon Weinberger
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0804169721
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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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.

The U.S. Combat Aircraft Industry, 1909-2000

The U.S. Combat Aircraft Industry, 1909-2000 PDF Author: Mark A. Lorell
Publisher: Rand Corporation
ISBN: 083303605X
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 159

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Book Description
Drawing on primary and secondary sources on the aircraft industry, this report provides a brief survey of industry structure, innovation, and competition in the U.S. fixed-wing combat aircraft industry from its earliest days to the present. It supports a much larger research effort examining the future of the structure, innovation, and competition of the U.S. military aircraft industrial base that responds to congressional concerns about that future.

Transforming the Department of Defense financial management

Transforming the Department of Defense financial management PDF Author: United States. Congress. House. Committee on Government Reform. Subcommittee on National Security, Veterans Affairs, and International Relations
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description


SECDEF

SECDEF PDF Author: Charles A. Stevenson
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1612342795
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
SECDEF offers an expert's insights into one of the most difficult jobs in Washington. Of the twenty-one men who have held the post of secretary of defense since it was created in 1947, only half served more than eighteen months. The first, James Forrestal, committed suicide soon after leaving the Pentagon. Seven of his successors were fired or allowed to resign gracefully after losing the confidence of the president. Many left frustrated and disappointed, while few retained the celebrity and esteem they held while in office. One observer has called the job "the graveyard of political ambitions." Charles A. Stevenson, who as a national security adviser to four U.S. senators has seen several defense secretaries in action, examines the unique challenges of this office to learn why the failure rate has been so high. SECDEF focuses on how the secretary performs in the broader world of national security policymaking, how he handles civil-military relations in planning strategy and wars, how he functions on the National Security Council and deals with the president and secretary of state, and how well he performs as a politician, especially in dealing with Congress. In office, Charles Stevenson finds, these men have tended to fall into one of the three general roles for executing such responsibilities: revolutionaries, firefighters, or, the most common role, team players. Stevenson analyzes each type for its defining characteristics and evaluates individual secretaries. This book will appeal to defense professionals and students alike and to readers interested in American defense and foreign policy who want to learn more about the important role often played by the person informally labeled the SECDEF.

Providing the Means of War

Providing the Means of War PDF Author:
Publisher: Government Printing Office
ISBN: 9780160876219
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description


The Pentagon Paradox

The Pentagon Paradox PDF Author: James Perry Stevenson
Publisher: US Naval Institute Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 474

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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.

The Pentagonists

The Pentagonists PDF Author: Arthur Ernest Fitzgerald
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
The publisher should send a free copy to every politician who spends our tax dollars. Fitzgerald is an engineer and cost expert in the Pentagon. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR