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Book Description: The first publication in a multivolume series on the history of the acquisition of major weapon systems by the Department of Defense, author Elliott Converse presents a meticulously researched overview of changes in acquisition policies, organizations, and processes within the United States military establishment during the decade and a half following World War II. Many of the changes that shaped the nature and course of weapons research and development, production, and contracting through the end of the century were instituted between 1945 and 1960; many of the problems that have repeatedly challenged defense policymakers and acquisition professionals also first surfaced during these years. This study is the first to combine the histories of the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) and the military services into one account. The volume is organized chronologically, with individual chapters addressing the roles of OSD, the Army, Navy and Air Force in two distinct periods.
This volume is a history of the acquisition of major weapon systems by the United States armed forces from 1945 to 1960, the decade and a half that spanned the Truman and Eisenhower administrations following World War II. These instruments of warfare—aircraft, armored vehicles, artillery, guided missiles, naval vessels, and supporting electronic systems—when combined with nuclear warheads, gave the postwar American military unprecedented deterrent and striking power.1 They were also enormously expensive. The volume is organized chronologically, with individual chapters addressing the roles of OSD, the Army, Navy, and Air Force in two distinct periods. The first, roughly coinciding with President Truman’s tenure, covers the years from the end of World War II through the end of the Korean War in 1953. The second spans the two terms of the Eisenhower presidency from 1953 through early 1961. The year 1953 marked a natural breakpoint between the two periods. The Korean War had ended. President Eisenhower and his defense team began implementing the “New Look,” a policy and strategy based on nuclear weapons, which they believed would provide security and make it possible to reduce military spending. The New Look’s stress on nuclear weapons, along with the deployment of the first operational guided missiles and the rapid advances subsequently made in nuclear and missile technology, profoundly influenced acquisition in the services throughout the 1950s and the remainder of the century. As used in this study, the term “acquisition” encompasses the activities by which the United States obtains weapons and other equipment. In surveying the history of acquisition between 1945 and 1960, this study discusses or refers in passing to many of the hundreds of weapon system programs initiated by the services in that period, but it is not a weapons encyclopedia. Instead, it investigates a few major programs in depth in the belief that such detailed examination best reveals the evolution of acquisition policies, organizations, and processes, and the various forces influencing weapons programs.
This illustrated book that includes tables, charts, and maps primarily discusses the role of USAREUR (US Army Europe) in rearming and training the new German Army which was perhaps the Army's single greatest contribution toward maintaining security in Western Europe. Likewise, the relationship between American soldiers and their French and West German hosts evolved over time and is a critical element in telling the story of the US Army in Europe.
This historical resource details the researching, developing, and engineering of the United States Army weapons and munitions facility programs located in New Jersey that has prepared American troops for over a century to meet their challenges. This fascinating monograph, filled with photographs, explores the history of the Picatinny Arsenal, first built in 1880 to house gunpowder. This gunpowder was sent to American military troops in the Spanish-American War, the Philippine Insurrection, and other major conflicts. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Arsenal influenced the development of artillery, tank rounds and other major weaponry. Picatinny was the main provider of ammunition for the U.S. military during WWII. The Arsenal continued to develop major weapons such as the bazooka rocket, the C-4 explosive, and the "Atomic Annie" artillery shell. Currently, there are more than 5,000 scientists, engineers and other staff at Picatinny Arsenal using advanced technology to create weapons, ammunition, and to design related products and storage components. Click here for more products: Arms & Weapons publications can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/arms-weapons History of American Industry & Innovation collection World War II resources collection
The award-winning historian delivers a “brilliant and deeply informed” analysis of American power from the Spanish-American War to the Trump Administration (New York Journal of Books). In this sweeping and incisive history of US foreign relations, historian Alfred McCoy explores America’s rise as a world power from the 1890s through the Cold War, and its bid to extend its hegemony deep into the twenty-first century. Since American dominance reached its apex at the close of the Cold War, the nation has met new challenges that it is increasingly unequipped to handle. From the disastrous invasion of Iraq to the failure of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, fracturing military alliances, and the blundering nationalism of Donald Trump, McCoy traces US decline in the face of rising powers such as China. He also offers a critique of America’s attempt to maintain its position through cyberwar, covert intervention, client elites, psychological torture, and worldwide surveillance.
Antulio J. Echevarria II reveals how successive generations of American strategic theorists have thought about war. Analyzing the work of Alfred Thayer Mahan, Billy Mitchell, Bernard Brodie, Robert Osgood, Thomas Schelling, Herman Kahn, Henry Eccles, Joseph Wiley, Harry Summers, John Boyd, William Lind, and John Warden, he uncovers the logic that underpinned each theorist's critical concepts, core principles, and basic assumptions about the nature and character of war. In so doing, he identifies four paradigms of war's nature - traditional, modern, political, and materialist - that have shaped American strategic thought. If war's logic is political, as Carl von Clausewitz said, then so too is thinking about war.
Exploring the growth of the Marines from disadvantaged to elite force, this history “offers an excellent analysis of how the marines became the Marines.” (Publishers Weekly) The Marine Corps has always considered itself a breed apart. This undying faith in its own exceptionalism is what has made the Marines one of the sharpest, swiftest tools of American military power. Aaron O’Connell focuses on the period from World War II to Vietnam, when the Marine Corps transformed itself from America’s least respected to its most elite armed force. Venerating sacrifice and suffering, privileging the collective over the individual, Corps culture was saturated with romantic and religious overtones that had enormous marketing potential in a postwar America energized by new global responsibilities. Capitalizing on this, the Marines curried the favor of the nation’s best reporters, befriended publishers, courted Hollywood and Congress, and built a public relations infrastructure that would eventually brand it as the most prestigious military service in America. But as O’Connell suggests, the Corps’ triumphs did not come without costs, including a culture of violence that sometimes spread beyond the battlefield. “A significant and original contribution to both the military history of the Cold War and the ongoing conversation about the militarization of American culture.” —Beth Bailey, author of America's Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force “Takes readers inside the culture of the Corps.” —Nathaniel Fick, author of One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer “Insightful.” —Library Journal “A powerful account of the relationship between fighting war and preserving peace, viewed through the lens of the stories that built support for both.” —Kirkus Reviews “Absorbing.” —The Wall Street Journal