Download or read book Command and Control written by Eric Schlosser and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-09-17 with total page 702 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oscar-shortlisted documentary Command and Control, directed by Robert Kenner, finds its origins in Eric Schlosser's book and continues to explore the little-known history of the management and safety concerns of America's nuclear aresenal. “A devastatingly lucid and detailed new history of nuclear weapons in the U.S. Fascinating.” —Lev Grossman, TIME Magazine “Perilous and gripping . . . Schlosser skillfully weaves together an engrossing account of both the science and the politics of nuclear weapons safety.” —San Francisco Chronicle A myth-shattering exposé of America’s nuclear weapons Famed investigative journalist Eric Schlosser digs deep to uncover secrets about the management of America’s nuclear arsenal. A groundbreaking account of accidents, near misses, extraordinary heroism, and technological breakthroughs, Command and Control explores the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: How do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them? That question has never been resolved—and Schlosser reveals how the combination of human fallibility and technological complexity still poses a grave risk to mankind. While the harms of global warming increasingly dominate the news, the equally dangerous yet more immediate threat of nuclear weapons has been largely forgotten. Written with the vibrancy of a first-rate thriller, Command and Control interweaves the minute-by-minute story of an accident at a nuclear missile silo in rural Arkansas with a historical narrative that spans more than fifty years. It depicts the urgent effort by American scientists, policy makers, and military officers to ensure that nuclear weapons can’t be stolen, sabotaged, used without permission, or detonated inadvertently. Schlosser also looks at the Cold War from a new perspective, offering history from the ground up, telling the stories of bomber pilots, missile commanders, maintenance crews, and other ordinary servicemen who risked their lives to avert a nuclear holocaust. At the heart of the book lies the struggle, amid the rolling hills and small farms of Damascus, Arkansas, to prevent the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States. Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with people who designed and routinely handled nuclear weapons, Command and Control takes readers into a terrifying but fascinating world that, until now, has been largely hidden from view. Through the details of a single accident, Schlosser illustrates how an unlikely event can become unavoidable, how small risks can have terrible consequences, and how the most brilliant minds in the nation can only provide us with an illusion of control. Audacious, gripping, and unforgettable, Command and Control is a tour de force of investigative journalism, an eye-opening look at the dangers of America’s nuclear age.
Download or read book Technology and Command written by William B. McClure and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The introduction of advanced technologies into the military, which is known as the "revolution in military affairs," is producing an opportunity for significant changes in the American military's paradigm for command and control. The future battlespace will require commanders to operate more efficiently and at a higher operations tempo, so that commanders will be able to use the advantages of dominant battlespace awareness to enhance what is known as "command-by-intent." But the more likely outcome is a return tocommand-by-direction. A potential consequence of this change is that significant command functions will be made by machines that act, not as an assistant, but as the decision maker and executor -- which is known as the machine commander. However, the current U.S. military doctrine is inconsistent about the admissibility of such an entity, even though technological developments are on the threshold of delivering the components for constructing the first-generation machine commander. Furthermore, the same infrastructure that assists the traditional human commander creates a framework for using a machine commander. Furthermore, the same infrastructure that assists the tradiitional human commander creates a framework for using a machine commander. While resistance to this technology is expected, this is the proper time to examine the implications of a machine commander for military operations in the future."--Abstract
Download or read book Information Technology and Military Power written by Jon R. Lindsay and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-15 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Militaries with state-of-the-art information technology sometimes bog down in confusing conflicts. To understand why, it is important to understand the micro-foundations of military power in the information age, and this is exactly what Jon R. Lindsay's Information Technology and Military Power gives us. As Lindsay shows, digital systems now mediate almost every effort to gather, store, display, analyze, and communicate information in military organizations. He highlights how personnel now struggle with their own information systems as much as with the enemy. Throughout this foray into networked technology in military operations, we see how information practice—the ways in which practitioners use technology in actual operations—shapes the effectiveness of military performance. The quality of information practice depends on the interaction between strategic problems and organizational solutions. Information Technology and Military Power explores information practice through a series of detailed historical cases and ethnographic studies of military organizations at war. Lindsay explains why the US military, despite all its technological advantages, has struggled for so long in unconventional conflicts against weaker adversaries. This same perspective suggests that the US retains important advantages against advanced competitors like China that are less prepared to cope with the complexity of information systems in wartime. Lindsay argues convincingly that a better understanding of how personnel actually use technology can inform the design of command and control, improve the net assessment of military power, and promote reforms to improve military performance. Warfighting problems and technical solutions keep on changing, but information practice is always stuck in between.
Download or read book The Technology of Command written by National Academies Press and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Technology and Command Implications for Military Operations in the Twenty First Century written by and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The introduction of advanced technologies into the military, which is known as the "revolution in military affairs," is producing an opportunity for significant changes in the American military's paradigm for command and control. The future battlespace will require commanders to operate more efficiently and at a higher operations tempo, so that commanders will be able to use the advantages of dominant battlespace awareness to enhance what is known as "command-by intent." But the more likely outcome is a return to command-by-direction. A potential consequence of this change is that significant command functions will be made by machines that act, not as an assistant, but as the decision maker and executor which is known as the machine commander. However, the current U.S. military doctrine is inconsistent about the admissibility of such an entity, even though technological developments are on the threshold of delivering the components for constructing the first-generation machine commander. Furthermore, the same infrastructure that assists the traditional human commander creates a framework for using a machine commander. While resistance to this technology is expected, this is the proper time to examine the implications of a machine commander for military operations in the future.
Download or read book Command and Control The Sociotechnical Perspective written by Guy H Walker and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2017-09-18 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Military command and control is not merely evolving, it is co-evolving. Technology is creating new opportunities for different types of command and control, and new types of command and control are creating new aspirations for technology. The question is how to manage this process, how to achieve a jointly optimised blend of socio and technical and create the kind of agility and self-synchronisation that modern forms of command and control promise. The answer put forward in this book is to re-visit sociotechnical systems theory. In doing so, the problems of 21st century command and control can be approached from an alternative, multi-disciplinary and above all human-centred perspective. Human factors (HF) is also co-evolving. The traditional conception of the field is to serve as a conduit for knowledge between engineering and psychology yet 21st century command and control presents an altogether different challenge. Viewing military command and control through the lens of sociotechnical theory forces us to confront difficult questions about the non-linear nature of people and technology: technology is changing, from platform centric to network centric; the interaction with that technology is changing, from prescribed to exploratory; and complexity is increasing, from behaviour that is linear to that which is emergent. The various chapters look at this transition and draw out ways in which sociotechnical systems theory can help to understand it. The sociotechnical perspective reveals itself as part of a conceptual toolkit through which military command and control can be transitioned, from notions of bureaucratic, hierarchical ways of operating to the devolved, agile, self-synchronising behaviour promised by modern forms of command and control like Network Enabled Capability (NEC). Sociotechnical system theory brings with it a sixty year legacy of practical application and this real-world grounding in business process re-engineering underlies the entire book. An attempt has been made to bring a set of sometimes abstract (but no less useful) principles down to the level of easy examples, design principles, evaluation criteria and actionable models. All of these are based on an extensive review of the current state of the art, new sociotechnical/NEC studies conducted by the authors, and insights derived from field studies of real-life command and control. Time and again, what emerges is a realisation that the most agile, self-synchronising component of all in command and control settings is the human.
Download or read book Software Takes Command written by Lev Manovich and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-07-04 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers the first look at the aesthetics of contemporary design from the theoretical perspectives of media theory and 'software studies'.
Download or read book Command in War written by Martin Van Creveld and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1985 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many books have been written about strategy, tactics, and great commanders. This is the first book to deal exclusively with the nature of command itself, and to trace its development over two thousand years from ancient Greece to Vietnam. It treats historically the whole variety of problems involved in commanding armies, including staff organization and administration, communications methods and technologies, weaponry, and logistics. And it analyzes the relationship between these problems and military strategy. In vivid descriptions of key battles and campaigns—among others, Napoleon at Jena, Moltke’s Königgrätz campaign, the Arab–Israeli war of 1973, and the Americans in Vietnam—Martin van Creveld focuses on the means of command and shows how those means worked in practice. He finds that technological advances such as the railroad, breech-loading rifles, the telegraph and later the radio, tanks, and helicopters all brought commanders not only new tactical possibilities but also new limitations. Although vast changes have occurred in military thinking and technology, the one constant has been an endless search for certainty—certainty about the state and intentions of the enemy’s forces; certainty about the manifold factors that together constitute the environment in which war is fought, from the weather and terrain to radioactivity and the presence of chemical warfare agents; and certainty about the state, intentions, and activities of one’s own forces. The book concludes that progress in command has usually been achieved less by employing more advanced technologies than by finding ways to transcend the limitations of existing ones.
Download or read book The Impact of the New Technology on Command System Design written by Andrew E. Wessel and published by . This book was released on 1966 with total page 10 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A few years ago S.M. Genensky and author wrote a paper titled, Some Thoughts on Developing Future Command and Control Systems. In brief, the paper argued for a version of an 'on-site' development and design philosophy supported by a military service center which would provide the appropriate specialists on loan to the given user command. This paper raises some questions as to whether the newer capabilities for 'on-line' interactions between users and automated systems have outmoded the previous thinking on the subject of command system design.
Download or read book Evolutionary Technology in the Current Revolution in Military Affairs the Army Tactical Command and Control System written by Elizabeth A. Stanley and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2022 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Applying Digital Technologies to Evaluation written by Carl W. Lickteig and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Army's growing reliance on digital technologies reinforces and extends concerns about training and evaluation, particularly in the area of command and control. Digital technology represents a new and powerful weapon for attacking evaluation requirements, but is a double-edged sword that poses challenge and opportunity. This report examines bow digital technologies can help solve many evaluation challenges, including the ones they create. The Background chapter reviews basic issues confronting conventional command and control performance and evaluation. Two key issues considered are manually burdened methods and measures, and the limitations imposed by analog media. The Findings chapter examines bow digital technologies might improve evaluations of command and control performance. This examination begins by identifying many of the new challenges introduced by digital command and control systems. Next, opportunities for overcoming evaluation challenges through the application of digital technologies are considered, including automated measures of versus about performance, more precise and comprehensive measures, and less burdened measurement methods. Finally, examples of digital measurement methods illustrate the potential for improving command and control evaluation through digital data integration, data mining, and data visualization. The report's conclusions identify some key research and development efforts required for applying digital technology to improve command and control performance and evaluation."--DTIC.
Download or read book Impact of Information Technology on Battle Command Lessons From Management Science and Business written by George E. Dodge and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 51 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The possible effects of information technology insertion on organizations and their personnel are derived from an analysis of published management science and business literature. Two major points are developed. First, many factors other than the technical potential of a given information technology interact with one another and with the technology itself to determine the resultant nature, form, and functionality of the "digitized" organization. Second, the most significant impact on commanders and their staffs for the foreseeable future will not be quantum improvements in operational performance made possible by information technology but, rather, the technology insertion process, itself. Based on this analysis, we propose that implications for command in a digitized environment can be best described by reference to a continuum of organizational structures and associated behaviors. The extremes of this continuum are defined as digital mechanistic and digital organic. A third point between these two extremes is defined as digital adaptive. We discuss the nature of command over the range of the proposed continuum. The new competencies that might be required of commanders and their staffs regardless of the outcome of the technology insertion process are then discussed. The chapter concludes with suggestions for improving the technology insertion process.
Download or read book The Command Or Control Dilemma written by Gregory A. Roman and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an information-age military, the proper organizational orientation may no longer be one of command and control, but command or control. Historically, the military's response to new information technology has always been greater centralized control. Unfortunately, greater centralized control is the exact opposite of what is desired to maximize the benefits of information technology. As the tempo of operations increases, so does the demand for faster decision making. Information technology, however, is creating a faster information gathering cycle, but not a correspondingly faster decision making cycle. This creates an imbalance that can only be corrected by the proper organizational orientation which takes full advantage of information. The information-age military needs the shared information-gathering advantages of a networked organization with the decentralized decision-making advantages of a flattened hierarchical organization. Failure to adapt to a new organizational orientation of decentralized control may result in a US military unable to operate at the increased tempo of future warfare.
Download or read book Information Technology for Command and Control written by Stephen J. Andriole and published by Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers(IEEE). This book was released on 1991 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Military Intelligence Technology of the Future written by Dominic Joseph Caraccilo and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2006-01-15 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains the importance of military intelligence in warfare and describes the technologies and techniques used by military intelligence officers to collect information and data.
Download or read book Realizing the Potential of C4I written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1999-06-17 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rapid progress in information and communications technologies is dramatically enhancing the strategic role of information, positioning effective exploitation of these technology advances as a critical success factor in military affairs. These technology advances are drivers and enablers for the "nervous system" of the militaryâ€"its command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence (C4I) systemsâ€"to more effectively use the "muscle" side of the military. Authored by a committee of experts drawn equally from the military and commercial sectors, Realizing the Potential of C4I identifies three major areas as fundamental challenges to the full Department of Defense (DOD) exploitation of C4I technologyâ€"information systems security, interoperability, and various aspects of DOD process and culture. The book details principles by which to assess DOD efforts in these areas over the long term and provides specific, more immediately actionable recommendations. Although DOD is the focus of this book, the principles and issues presented are also relevant to interoperability, architecture, and security challenges faced by government as a whole and by large, complex public and private enterprises across the economy.
Download or read book Information Technology for Command and Control written by and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
