Unmanned Combat Air Systems: A New Kind of Carrier Aviation Review

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(More customer reviews)Norman Friedman introduces readers to the newest generation of weapon systems to join the inventories of nations around the world. As early as World War II, German scientists began experimenting with unmanned aerial weapons to attack allied aircraft and ships. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, many nations have taken those original concepts and turned them into a new breed of combat system. Friedman exposes to the readers to that transformation and to the new systems in his latest book "Unmanned Combat Air Systems".
The most serious mistake a nation can make is to try and fight the next war like the last. After World War I, the French assumed that the next war would be fought in trenches - so they built the Maginot line. Meanwhile, the Germans revolutionized combat by introducing maneuver warfare. Friedman persuades the reader of the need for militaries to transform their way of conducting combat.
Friedman also explains that as commanders changed their concept for the employment of combat forces, changes are also necessary in forming an effective picture of the battlefield. In the days of Napoleonic warfare, commanders would seek the high ground to see how his adversary arrayed his opposing forces. With this picture in his mind, the commander would then send messages to his units to execute the attack. The author continues that as the speed of combat increased, new methods were needed to create the picture of the battlefield and to control subordinate forces. It is in this role, that Unmanned Aerial Systems began to prove their worth over the last thirty years.
Some readers may be tempted to skip right to Appendix II, where Friedman focuses only on the evolution of the aerial systems in various countries. Comprising almost 180 pages, this section of the book is a by-nation description of the various unmanned aerial systems that have been used in each country. This section is enhanced with numerous black and white photographs.
In the past few years, we have witnessed the employment of weapons from these vehicles. As we move forward into the twenty-first century, Friedman explains the new capabilities to be included in the next generation of these systems. The first section of the book is certainly targeted for military leaders, but casual readers looking to learn more about the various UASs will find Appendix II to be an absolute treasure.
For readers wanting to learn more about Friedman's concepts on transformation, I highly recommend his book "Network-Centric Warfare: How Navies Learned to Fight Smarter Through Three World Wars".


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The Naval Institute Guide to World Naval Weapon Systems (Naval Institute Guide to World Naval Weapons Systems) Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a little bit dated now, but not horribly so. The cold war ending has slowed down new naval weapon systems. Some of the "new" systems in here never did appear, and other older systems are gone as well. Using this guidebook plus some judicious web surfing is pretty good naval research for the non-specialist. Of course if you need the expensive current editions, you already know that...

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Long recognized as the most comprehensive reference work available on the subject, this guide remains the only complete reference to the weapons currently in service in ships, submarines, and naval aircraft around the world. It is the only book of its type to explain the transformation of the U.S. Navy into a network-centric force, a transformation that has had immense consequences for choices of tactics, weapons, services, and the systems coordinating them. This guide also offers unparalleled coverage of the weapons, sensors, and command systems of the world's navies, both those the U.S. Navy works with and those it may have to fight. Written by one of the world's leading naval analysts, the book describes the weapons and systems in detail and examines the crucial relationship between them. Completely rewritten and newly illustrated, this edition makes a special effort to provide a clear and precise account of how weapon technology has changed to meet the new tactical and strategic challenges facing international naval forces today. Cutting-edge information is found throughout, enhanced by many new and rarely seen photographs and drawings.For example, this volume offers an unusually full account of the "system of systems" under development by the U.S. Navy and the other services to fight future limited regional wars. That initiative includes the changing role of space resources as they affect war on, over, and under the sea. This edition also benefits from the flood of material from Russia, whose weapons and systems are now owned and operated by numerous countries and are likely to be sold to many more. The guide provides uniquely detailed coverage of weapons developed and deployed in the Far East, an area that promises to be the liveliest scene of naval action in the future. Extensive sections are devoted to explaining the intricate workings of sensors and command systems. No other book, or even set of books, offers this sort of material in such accessible form. Its detail and completeness are backed by the authority of a long established professional expert. For the most complete and up-to-date information about weapons in every navy in the world, this is the essential resource - a work that, in effect, can serve as a textbook of modern naval technology.

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Network-Centric Warfare: How Navies Learned to Fight Smarter Through Three World Wars Review

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(More customer reviews)This book is a chronology of how naval command and control (C2) systems evolved over the last 100 years in response to changing technologies and threat environments. It focuses especially on the U.S. Navy, but includes discussions of foreign naval developments as well. It is an indispensable book to understand how the U.S. Navy's conception of `command and decision' (CD), the navy's version of C2, led incrementally to the current CD system sometimes called Network Centric Warfare (NSW), but which Friedman prefers to call `picture centric warfare'. As Friedman makes clear NSW is only the latest iteration of a continually evolving concept. Friedman has identified three phases that mark the evolution CD systems: the radio phase; the radar phase; and the computer phase.
The first phase is what he calls the [wireless] radio phase. This began in the first ten years of the 20th Century, when First Sea Lord, Sir John Fisher (of Dreadnaught fame) determined that the most economical way to deal with the problems facing the Royal Navy was to introduce what today would be called a centralized C2 system based on ocean surveillance, wireless communications, signals intelligence and what today are called flag plots (i.e. ship locations). Fisher then proposed to use the information produced by this system to vector ships against enemy naval threats. WWI (1914-1918) saw Fisher's concept tested and proven. Fisher essentially created the first command, control, communications , intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C3ISR) system concept on which all future developments were based.
The U.S. Navy took the lead in Friedman's radar phase which really began in WWII and lasted through the Cold War. The takeaway in this phase is that the exponential growth of information from an increasing number of multiple sources, made information management more and more difficult. This period saw the development of the ship borne Combat Information Center (CIC) as a means of coping with information overloads.
In his third phase Friedman notes that computer based innovations, (e.g. Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS)) have provided at least a temporary solution to information management. And that there is a good reason why NCW, the latest CD iteration, is called an information driven concept.
This is an excellent book that fortunately includes a list acronyms that is indispensable for following Friedman's sometimes dense prose.


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Over the past decade, the United States has moved toward a new style of warfare, called network centric, that uses an almost real-time, shared picture of a military situation as the basis for operations. To explain what network-centric warfare is and how it works, defense analyst Norman Friedman uses specific historical examples of actual combat rather than the abstractions common to other books on the subject. He argues that navies invented this style of warfare and that twentieth-century wars, culminating in the Cold War, show how networked warfare worked and did not work and illustrate what net-on-net warfare means. The book builds on Friedman s personal experience in an early application of network-centric warfare that developed the method of targeting the Tomahawk anti-ship missile.To give readers a realistic feeling for what the new style of warfare offers and what is needed to make it work, the book concentrates on the tactical picture, not the communications network itself. Friedman s focus on what the warriors really want and need makes it possible to evaluate the various contributions to a network-centric system. Without such a focus, Friedman notes, the needs of networked warfare reduce simply to the desire for more and more information, delivered at greater and greater speeds. The information he provides is valuable to all the services, and students of history will appreciate the light it sheds on new ways of understanding old conflicts.

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