HISTORY OF WAR

Akbar the Great (1542-1605)

2011-11-24T01:02:00.001-08:00

This monarch is of the linage of the great Tamerlane, the Tartar king whom men have called the scourge of God; the same who, having made war upon Bajazid, the emperor of the Turks.

He was the seventh descendant of Tamerlane.

His wars were like other Indian wars, only mitigated by his sovereign quality of mercy to those who submitted and by his scrupulous care that the peasant should not suffer by the passage of his troops.

Akbar’s empire included the whole of northern India from the Afghan region in the north-west to Assam in the east, and from Kashmir in the Himalayans to the frontier of Bijapur and Golconda in the Deccan.

Battle of Panipat in 1556 was the first battle for Akbar the Great. Hemu, the Hindu general of Afghan King of Bengal marched towards Agra on hearing the news of the death of Humayun, father of Akbar. He captured Agra and later move to Delhi.

The battle happened in Panipat and Hemu was captured and brought before Akbar who refused to kill an already dying man.

After the war, the Afghan King, Muhammad Adil Shah, was killed in a conflict with the governor of Bengal, Sikandar Sur, another claimant to the throne of Delhi, lost heart and surrendered.

Gwalior (1557), Ajmer, Alwar and Kalpi, later brought under imperial control. The Mughal empire was reestablished in India.

In 1569, the conquest of Ranthambhor and Bundelkhand added of the territory under Mughal rule. The conquest of Gujarat in 1573 was another important victory despite the subsequent rebellion.

In 1586, Akbar conquest Kashmir and in 1592, he annexation Sind added to the Mughal Empire.

Akbar was a good military leader who equipped his army with heavy artillery and was able to unite northern India under his rule.

He govern his empire efficiently by divided it into twelve provinces and invited the support of Hindus and Rajput prices to help rule.
Akbar the Great (1542-1605)

Eighty Years War (1566-1648)

2011-09-24T09:18:00.001-07:00

The rebellion of the Dutch provinces against their Spanish overlords broke out in 1568. It was initially, on the whole, a military disaster, with the Dutch unable to stand in the field against the veteran Spanish tercios.

At that time the rebellious regions had a population of only 75,000; by the turn of the century, the seven provinces that formed the Dutch public had a round one million people.

The Spanish monarchy, by contrast control a population of around 16 million and could draw in resources from a vast empire.

In 1576 the Spanish soldiers, who had not received pay for a considerable of time, started looting and terrorizing village and towns in Brabant and Flanders. The violence was so intense that in July the Council of State in Brussels branded the mutinous Spanish as enemies.

As the result, the war descended into a series of sieges of the many fortified town and cities in the Low Countries.

On 25th September 1576, the States General commissioner several commanding officers who were ordered to assemble an army, was given the task of chasing away the Spanish troops.

This was the longest rebellion in modern European history, the Eighty Years’ War, also known as the Dutch Revolt, freed the seven Protestant United Provinces of the northern Low Countries from Spain rule and led to the formation of the modern Netherlands.

It is the biggest, bloodiest and most implacable of all the wars which have been waged since the beginning of the world.

The Dutch navy, which did not exist in 1568, had achieved the reputation of being the best in the Atlantic world by a series of victories culminating in destruction of a Spanish armada in The Downs.

In June 1648, The Dutch signed a peace treaty at Munster between Dutch and King Philip IV of Spain. For Dutch Republic, the Treaty of Munster was the prize for nearly a century of struggle.

By 1648, Spain’s position as a major power was tenuous: by 1659 she was definitely in decline, a process acetated over the rest of the seventeenth century by a series of costly and destructive wars with France.
Eighty Years War (1566-1648)

Tokhtamysh–Timur war

2011-08-26T21:38:00.000-07:00

The Tokhtamysh–Timur war was fought in the 1380s and early 1390s between Tokhtamysh, khan of the Golden Horde and the Mongol warlord and conqueror Timur, in the areas of the Caucasus mountains, Turkistan and Eastern Europe.

Timur, conqueror of much of western and central Asia and founder of the Timurid Empire in Central Asia.

Tokhtamysh, a member of the Chingisid dynasty and a descendant of Juchi. Throughout the 1380s, friction between Tokhtamysh and Timur mounted as both sought dominance over Khwarezm and Azerbaijan.

During 1385 and the next two years, Timur legions marched through Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia and northern Mesopotamia, expelling Tokhtamysh’s garrisons, massacring tens of thousands of the inhabitants and laying waste untold numbers of towns and cities.

In 1391, Timur defeated Tokhtamysh in a major battle east of the Volga River.

In 1395, Timur himself moved westward to try to destroy Tokhtamysh, who had concluded alliances with Moscow, Poland, and Lithuania to consolidate his position.

Timur pursued a policy of laying waste the lands of opponents.

Timur defeated Tokhtamysh again at a battle on the Terek River, north of the Caucasus. Timur chased Tokhtamysh toward Bulgar-on-the Volga.

He finally destroyed the power of Tokhtamysh and thus made himself master of the entire area up to the Mediterranean coasts and the frontiers of Asia Minor.
Tokhtamysh–Timur war

Indo Pakistan War 1965

2011-06-25T02:12:00.001-07:00

Indo-Pakistan War in 1947 saw that Pakistan initially occupies one-third of Kashmir and India eventually occupies three-fifths.

In 1965, Pakistan troops attempt to steep into Indian controlled Kashmir. In this war India clashes with Pakistan on all fronts.

At 3.30 hours, on 1 September 1965, the entire Chhamb area came under massive artillery bombardment. Pakistan had launched operation Grand Slam.

The Pakistan army had been trained poised itself to go on an offensive in Kashmir. It appeared that Pakistan’s aimed was to keep the war confined to Jammu and Kashmir.

India however resisted the temptation of deploying her strike forces or other reserves from Punjab into this area. A few battles were fought here in which Pakistani tanks were used. A ceasefire was arranged in May 1965.
Indo Pakistan War 1965

Mycenaean War with Crete

2011-05-07T08:33:00.001-07:00

The Mycenaean civilization, which reached its peaked between 1500 and 1200 BC, was the first great civilization on the Greek mainland.

Mycenaean civilization ruled by kings who inhibited places enclosed within massive was in easily defensible hilltops.

By the time they invaded Crete, the kings had strongly fortified these palaces, suggesting that theirs was a more warlike society.

Mycenae’s power was complete when a volcanic eruption in Crete weakened the power of the kingdom, which had been Mycenae’s main power rival.

The civilization of Crete began to decline after 1628 BC though a series of disaster. First volcanic island of Thera exploded, sending massive tidal wave to crash into the northern shore of Crete.

Crete war with the mainland Mycenaeans eroded wealth, and in 1450 BC, Mycenaean swept through Crete.

The Mycenaean colonization of Crete lasted from 1400 to 1100 BC. Knossos probably retained its position as capital of the island, but its rules were subject to the the mainland.

The Cretan places were not fortified . Conditions were evident regularly peaceful on Crete. The priest kings of Crete dwelt secure in comfortable. Rambling places, brightly colored and open to the warm sky.

From 14th century BC, roughly in the same period that the society on largely collapsed due to warfare and invasion, massive Cyclopean walls were erected at Mycenae, presumably replacing less impressive fortification.

Cyclopean architecture seems to have evolved in the Greek Argolid, is very notable in Mycenean architecture.

After the fall of Crete, Mycenaeans expanded their sphere of influence across the Mediterranean.
Mycenaean War with Crete

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles of UAV

2011-03-24T02:07:00.000-07:00

UAVs or unmanned aerial vehicles have been used in combat operations since the mid 1900s.

The UAV military utility was generally considered small during the Cold War. By the early 1980s, this had started to change. The advent of enhanced satellites communication, miniaturized electronics and sophisticated sensors fostered renewed interest in the potential capabilities of UAVs.

The first tactical UAV was the US Army SD-1 later called the MQM-S7 Falconer, a derivative of the prolific family to Radiophone target drones in use since World War II.

An unmanned aerial vehicle also known as drone refers to a pilotless aircraft a flying machine without an on-board human pilot or passengers.

UAVs equipped with proper the sensors could locate objects then transmit their own and object absolute positions such as longitude, latitude and even altitude based on calculations.

In order for a UAV to know its position, a combination of an Inertial Navigation System and GPS (Global Positioning System) compute and update the vehicles position and velocity.

They also have sophisticated camera equipment and radar system.

There are some aerial missions and tasks that are not suitable for human pilots either because it is too dangerous like military operations or it takes a long time in the air like mapping tasks.

UAVs have been invented to carry out such mission critical tasks.

What makes an UAV intelligent is the ability to fly to its target under varying conditions.

Unmanned aerial vehicles would eliminate the possibility of losing a pilot if the air vehicle were shot down.

By 2030, military experts predict that UCAVs or unmanned combat air vehicles will dominated air warfare. This kind of UAVs will be able to carry twice the payload of a manned fighter such as the F-16, but will only one third as much to build and operate.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles of UAV

Manhattan Project

2010-08-31T22:13:00.000-07:00

The Manhattan Project was the United States effort to develop an atomic weapon during World War II.

Recognition of the potential military consequences of fission came rapidly and the project was established with the blessing of President Roosevelt to work toward realization of this potential.

In three short year, the project brought atomic weaponry from scientific hypothesis to reality.

Following the discovery of nuclear fission in Germany in 1930, physicist the world over began experimenting to determine if neutrons were released during during fission and if so how they might be utilized to create a chain reaction.

If controlled in a reactor such as a chain reaction would be great power source.

If uncontrolled, it could be produced an explosion far greater than any from chemical explosives.

The initial effort to the progress of atomic research in the United States came from the scientific community, a small group of European scientists had settled in the United States after fleeing from Nazism in the late thirties.

They were well aware of the atomic research being done in Germany and fearing that Germany would produce an atomic bomb first, they prevailed upon Albert Einstein to persuade President Roosevelt to increase funding for atomic research and development.

By the spring of 1942, research had progressed to the point than an atomic weapon actually seemed possible.

The district’s offices for project were initially located in Manhattan at the headquarters of the Corps’ New York District.

The Manhattan project was the largest and most costly scientific research project in history.

Under the supervision of the OSRD (Office of Scientific Research and Development)and the department of the Army, the Manhattan Project involved thousands of physicist, chemist, engineers and technical working feverishly over a period of five years.

New physics chemistry and engineering knowledge was generated through the enormous expenditure of capital and human resource.

Nearly the entire physics profession in the United States was dedicated to the Manhattan Project.
Manhattan Project

History of KGB

2010-07-24T01:36:00.000-07:00

History of KGB
The Komitet Gosudarstevennoi Bezopasnosti, the English translation of which is “State Security Committee,” was known worldwide as the “KGB” and functioned as the USSR’ security police from 1954 to 1991.

There were many KGB directorates, each of which had its own area of expertise and had responsibility for one of the organization’s major objectives.

These objectives fall into four general categories:

Protection of the USSR’s internals security through preventing if possible, or suppressing, where prevention was impossible, political dissent and exposing economic crimes.
Implementation of the USSR’s foreign policy
Maintenance of security at the USSR’s borders
Political surveillance of the USSR’s armed forces

KGB had its roots in earlier Soviet security police departments, beginning in 1917 with the CHEKA, a Russian acronym for Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counterrevolution and Sabotage.

On the years that followed, the Soviet security police under went several changes of name and structure but remained politically important.

In particularly, the security police played significant roles in the development and maintenance of power by Lenin and Stalin.

In 1954, Nikita Khrushchev became first Secretary of the USSR and established the KGB as part of his effort to de-Stalinize his country.

While Stalin’s regime was noted for its wholesale exercise of repression, Khrushchev’s aim was to switch to Party control and enforcement of Party policy.

Under Khrushchev’s 1955 to 1964 regime, there were legal reforms, including establishment of criminal codes and procedures that limited the KGB’s investigatory powers.

However, these codes were soon amended in a manner that expanded the KGB’s investigatory powers and functions.

The power of KGB increased further during the years when Brezhnev was the USSR’s political leader from 1964 to 1982, and his protégé Yuri Andropov was the KGB’s chairman.

The nature of the KGB changed again in 1986, when the USSR’s political leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, instituted numerous changes that reduced the KGB’s influence.

As part of the dissolution of the USSR, Gorbachev dismantled the KGB in 1991.
History of KGB

Ancient Seaman

2010-06-10T08:37:00.000-07:00

Ancient Seaman
Seaman is an art. It is not something that can be picked up and studied on one’s spare time; indeed, it allows one no spare time for anything else – said Athenian Pericles.

Although the great Greek statesman made this observation more than 4 centuries before Christ it has held true throughout history.

Any ship is carefully designed and crafted floating machine which operates at the mercy of winds and seas. Its best survival and effectiveness depend largely upon the skills and experience of its officers and crew in ship handling.

When a vessel is also a weapons platform – a ship of war - it requires even more technical sophistication of its personal.

Seafarers are therefore consummate professional; amateurs have no place at sea. Their physical world is circumscribed by the confines of their ship, their universe by the endless waters and skies round about them.

As practical individuals, sailors throughout history have not generally had the time or the inclination to deal with the theoretical aspects of their work. They are ship drivers not philosophers.

By the same token, students and devotees of navies – and aspiring career officers - are usually attracted to naval history by its “business end” of the the adventure and fascination of naval wars battles and leaders.
Ancient Seaman

The Artillery

2010-05-03T19:04:00.000-07:00

The Artillery
Gunpowder originated in China in the seventh or eight century AD and arrived in western Europe towards the end of the thirteenth century.

The first cannon appeared in Flanders around 1314, England in 1321 and France in 1326, but artillery did not play an important role in battle until Castillon in 1453.

Around 1460 in France, cast bronze barrels replaced the old welded and bound iron guns – by 1543, iron cannon were cast in England.

Charles VIII of France took 266 cannon to Italy in 1494, and at Marignano (1515) Francis I assembled 40 cannon, a ratio of five guns per 1,000 men.

Learning from the lessons of the battle of Marignano, La Bicocca (1522) and Pavia (1525), monarchs generally improved their artillery.

The army raised in 1544 y King Ferdinand of Hungary and Bohemia to fight the Turks included 60 siege cannon, 80 field guns, 200,000 cannon balls and 500 tons of gunpowder, transported by 1,000 horses.

During the second half of the sixteenth century, a ratio of at least one cannon half of the sixteenth century, a ratio of at least one cannon per 1,000 men was considered essential.

Prince Maurice of Orange-Nassau reduced the Dutch artillery to four calibers (6-, 12-, 24- and 48 pounders) which could be mounted interchangeably on standardized carriages.

This provoked little imitation until the Thirty Years Way; Spain continued to fight the Dutch with fifty models divided amongst twenty calibers.

Gustavus Adolphus further improved the manufacture and application of artillery. His Swedish army possessed one gun per 400 men, whereas its imperial opponents in Germany had one per 2,000. He also reduced the length and weight of barrels to enhance mobility.

The infantry guns, some of which were the famous ‘leather guns’, cast copper barrels reinforced with leather and rope, were extremely light (625 pounds.

After his death at Lutzen (1632), however, many of Gustavus’s artillery reforms lapsed and were not extensively imitated until the 1690s.
The Artillery

Deficiencies of Primitive War

2010-04-13T08:28:00.001-07:00

Deficiencies of Primitive War
War experts judged primitive warfare to be technically defective compared with civilized warfare. There are various deficiencies of primitive war:

1. Poor mobilization of manpower because of reliance on completely voluntary participation

2. Inadequate supply and logistics

3. Due to deficiencies 1 and 2, an ability to conduct protracted campaigns

4. No organized training of units

5. Poor command and control

6. Due to deficiencies 4 and 5, undisciplined units and flighty morale

7. Few weapons specialized for war and neglect of fortification

8. No professional warriors or military specializations (such as swordsmen, bowmen and cavalrymen)

9. Ineffective tactics and neglect of certain principles of warfare

Deficiencies of Primitive War

Early Aircraft Carrier

2010-03-24T17:32:00.000-07:00

Early Aircraft Carrier
Invented by British navy during World War 1, the aircraft carrier remained a basically experimental vessel during the 1920s.

It consisted of a long flat flight deck (hence the carriers nickname “flattop”) superimposed on girders above the hangar deck and hull.

Aircraft were shuttled between hangar and flight decks by large elevators, the places were maintained, repaired and usually stowed in the hangar area.

Smaller elevators hoisted bombs, and ammunition from lower deck magazines to the hangar and flight deck.

The flight deck was made of wood so that enemy bombs might penetrate it and no explode until striking the armored hangar deck, thereby preserving the easily repaired flight deck for air operations.

The British began armoring the flight deck in the late 1930s to absorb bombs hits because their carriers operated in close proximity to enemy bomber fields in Europe.

The Americans kept the wooden flight deck because their carriers operated in the open pacific not armoring them until world war II.

Fight operations were directed in most carriers from spaces located on the “island” superstructure affixed to the smoke stack projecting above the flight deck on the starboard side.

Britain’s initial carriers proved clumsy in contrast to the new “fast” 30 knot carriers which Americans and Japanese navies converted from battle cruiser and battle ship hulls under the terms of the Washington treaties of 1922.

By the time these became operational at the end of the decade 3 types of single engine carrier aircraft had been developed – the fighter for ariel defense of the fleet and of the other planes; dual mission scout-bomber for reconnaissance and for horizontal and dive bombing of enemy ship and ground targets and the anti-ship torpedo plane.

The primary mission of carriers during the 1920s and 1930s was as “eye of the fleet” scouting for the battle line. The officers and aviators who specialized in carrier duty however soon developed an independent attack function for carriers with bombing and torpedo planes outnumbering the fighters.
Early Aircraft Carrier

Submarine Warfare – U-boat Era

2010-03-03T19:15:00.000-08:00

Submarine Warfare – U-boat Era
When the war began, there were only twenty five submarines in the German navy. By February 1915, however a crash construction program has resulted in a flotilla of U-boats, each carried with nineteen torpedoes, large enough to proclaim the waters surrounding the British Isles a war zone.

The subs would sink all enemy merchant ships within those waters and because British vessels were likely to run up neutral flags, the safety of neutral ship could not be guaranteed.

Within days, several British vessels went to the bottom. President Wilson warned the Kaiser that he would hold Germany to “strict accountability” for American lives and property lost to U-boats.

Some Americans considered submarine warfare peculiarly inhuman because U-boats usually struck without warning giving merchant seaman little time to abandon ship.

Moreover, unlike surface ships submarine did not rescue crewmen in the water. Both accusation were true.

On the surface, the fragile submarines were helpless. A light gun mounted on, the bow of freighter was enough to sink one. The first generations of submarine were very slow diving.

If a U-boats surfaced to warn an unarmed merchant vessel of its presence, it could be rammed.

Since submarines were tiny, their small crews cramped, there was no room to take aboard survivors.

On May 7, 1915, antisubmarine feelings in the United States burst into fury when English luxury liner Lusitania was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland. 1198 of 1959 passengers and crew aboard were killed, including 139 Americans.

So many lives were lost because the Lusitania went down in a mere eighteen minutes.

Then early in 1916, when the Allies announced that they were arming all merchant ships German responded with a declaration of “unrestricted submarine warfare.” The U-boats would sink all enemy vessels without warning.

President Wilson threatened a to break diplomatic relations with Germany – considered a prelude to a declaration of war – of unrestricted submarine warfare were continued.

The German General Staff did not the United States in the war, Plans for a major offensive were afoot. In any case, the navy did not have enough U-boats to carry out a full scale assault on British shipping. In the Sussex Pledge of May 4, 1916, the German promised Wilson to observe the rules of visit and search before attacking enemy ships.
Submarine Warfare – U-boat Era

Early Fighter Planes

2010-02-17T18:45:00.001-08:00

Early Fighter Planes
In 1903, the Wight brothers flew the first airplane. Soon after, some countries started flying airplanes in combat.

Many countries used fighter planes during World War 1 (1914-1918).

The most famous plane of that war was the Sopwith Camel. The Sopwith Camel was a single-engine biplane. Biplane have two sets of wings.

The camel could reach speeds of 115 miles (185 kilometers) per hour.

It could fly to an altitude of 19,000 feet (5,800 meters).

Toward the end of the war, the Lockheed Corporation built the first jet fighter used by the U.S military. It was called the P-80.

This jet fighter plane could fly more than 600 miles (966 kilometers) per hours.

It has a ceiling well above 45,000 feet. Armament is six .50 caliber machine guns in the nose.

The pilot is protected by a bullet resisting glass windshield and by armor plat fore and aft of his seat.

Air pressure in the cockpit is automatically reduced in combat to prevent explosive decompression if a bullet hits the canopy.

The kerosene burning General Electric jet engine, which has only one moving part and required no warming period, can be completely changes in less than 20 minutes.

After World War II, the P-80 became known as the Shooting Star.
Early Fighter Planes

Mole, Lancelot de

2010-01-23T18:45:00.001-08:00

Mole, Lancelot de
He was born in 13th March 1880 in Adelaide, Australia. De Mole’s father was an architect and surveyor and he himself followed a similar avenue as a draughtsman working on mining, surveying and engineering projects in Australia.

It was in 1911, while surveying in a particular rough terrain in Western Australia, that he first received the idea of the tank as a tracked, armored vehicle capable of traversing the most difficult ground.

He drew up detailed plans and submitted them to the war office in London the following year, but although they were rejected, not all the plans were returned to him.

When war broke out in 1914 he tried without success to interest the Australian authorities, even after he had constructed a model at their request.

A further blow came in 196, when the first tanks, built by British, appeared on the battlefields of France and looked remarkably similar in design to his own.

Believing that he could play a significant role in further tank development, but lacking the funds to travel to Britain, de Mole eventually succeeded, after an initial rejection by a medical board, in electing in the Australian Army, which got him to England at the beginning of 1918.

He immediately took his model to the British Inventions Committee, who were sufficiently impressed to pass it to the Tank Board, who promptly mislaid it for six weeks.

Meanwhile, in March 1918, Private de Mole was ordered to France and was unable to take matters further.

On his returned to England in early 1919 he made formal claim for a reward for his invention, but this was turned down on the grounds that not direct link could be established between his design and the first tanks that were built.

Even so, the Inventions Committee did authorize sum of money to cover his expenses, and in 1920 de Mole was a made a Commandeer of the Order of the British Empire.

Returning to Australia, de Mole worked as an engineer in the design branch of the Sydney Water Board.

He continued to invent, but none of his design, covered a wide range of times, were ever taken up. He died on 6th of May 1950 in Sydney.
Mole, Lancelot de

Logistics of Viking Army

2010-01-06T18:28:00.000-08:00

Logistics of Viking Army
Equipping and supplying army was a vastly different undertaking in the 8th century than it was in the period.

During the earlier part of the Viking Age decentralized power was unable to raise large forces without the consent of local warlords.

These need not have been any more powerful than the hersir. Regional forces would have have been raised and equipped within their own area of habitation.

The later laws (Hirdskra) for the defense of Norway on a territorial basis are a let survival of this.

The clan and tribe would each play their part in making possible to mount an expedition.

Origination of war effort would rest with local landowners, who would also be the leaders of society.

The semi-legendary Ragnar Lodbrok, who was the leader of the earliest manifestation of the Great Army in England, appears to have laid claim to royal status.

It would seem that as with the ancient clan system, the reality of power lay with his aett.

The son of Lodbrok (who may not have been blood relatives) were said to have conquered the northern kingdoms of the heptarchy in revenge for their ‘father’ having been executed in Northumbria.

The Great Army worked on a series of interlocking loyalties that were not immutable.

The campaigns of the army show that smaller groups were at liberty to conduct minor operations.

One of the Lodbroksons was killed whole raiding Devon in 878. The aim of this attack may have been to obtain land for settlement; in 876 Halfdan had divided Northumbria amongst his followers.

Two different systems of logistics can be seen at work. The opportunistic raiders established control of land and agriculture in the political vacuum of Northumbria.

In the future, the Norse Kings of York were to have a troubled but effective reign which, with some interruption, continued until the mid 10th century.

Armies were raised and equipped from this area, sometimes supported by overseas Viking. The 878 incident may have had more important implications, but the form of attack was that which surprised Lindisfarne in 793, a swift descent on an unprotected coast.

The invaders would take whatever they needed from the region and move on. Unfortunately for their leader (Hubba), the nature of defense had change. Although the king of Wessex was himself a fugitive, the local ealdorman was capable of meeting and destroying Hubba without assistance from the central state.

Ealdormen were likely likely the minor kings of the earlier period with a personal connection to their region, but were royal official who could be appointed, dismissed or transferred.

The outcome might reflect the vagaries of warfare, but some level of preparedness must have been necessary to defeat a force of 23 ships.
Logistics of Viking Army

Early days of US Intelligence

2009-11-17T07:33:00.001-08:00

Early days of US Intelligence
World War I began the modern era of code breaking and intelligence gathering. Major Ralph Van Deman, the “father of American Intelligence” created the Military Intelligence Section in the Army General Staff and a Cipher Bureau (MI-8) within this section.

However, it was World War II that provided a significant and visible victory for military intelligence agencies and laid the groundwork for what eventually became the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA).

One larger than life personality defining the early history of US intelligence agencies was William “Wild Bill” Donovan. Although was a successful lawyer, and would later become assistant attorney general during the Hoover Administration. He enlisted in the army just before the United States entered World War I.

He would distinguish himself through two world wars as the only American to have received out nation’s four highest awards: The Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Service Cross, the Distinguished Service Medal and the National Security Medal.

During World War II, President Roosevelt appointed Donovan to create an intelligence service, and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) began in June 1942.

Under Donovan’s leadership, the OSS collected and analyzed information needed by the Joint Chief of Staff to conduct clandestine operations that were not carried out by other federal agencies or the military.

After the war, the agency became a civilian organization that would coordinate global intelligence gathering and execute operations under the banner of the CIA.

The NSA is the US intelligence agency within the DoD that is responsible for cryptographic security and signals intelligence.

The NSA grew out of the communication intelligence activities of US military units during World War II. The origins of the NSA can be traced to an organization originally established within the DoD , under the command of the Joint Chief of Staff as the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA), on May 20, 1949.

The creation of the NSA was authorized in a letter written by President Harry S. Truman in June 1952 (although the letter was classified and remained unknown to the public for more than a generation).

The NSA, although not a creation of Congress, is still subject to congressional review, even though it is one of the most secret of all US intelligence agencies. Its director is a military officer of flag rank, a general or admiral.
Early days of US Intelligence

Pentagon

2009-10-27T01:46:00.000-07:00

Pentagon
Pentagon, headquarters for the Department of Defense and of the army, the navy and the air force.

Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Department of War and the Department of the Navy were housed at the President’s right hand, in what is now known as Eisenhower Executive Building at 17th and Pennsylvania in Washington.

Planners decided to bring the War and Navy Departments and 15 other military agencies together in one place for the sake of efficiency. The building they designed is remarkable even 60 years later.

Located in Arlington, Virginia across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C, the Pentagon is a five story, five sided building.

Covering an area of thirty-four caress and 3.7 million square feet of office space it is one of the largest offices building in the world.

It is twice as large as the Merchandise Mart in Chicago and has three times the office space of Empire State Building in New York.

Completed in 1943, it is though to be one of the most efficient office buildings in the world.

Despite 17.5 miles of corridors it takes only seven minutes to walk between any two points in the building.

Working within this famous building is a very large number of employees with great talent, resilience, and dedication.

Most insiders refer to the Pentagon simply as the “Building” or a more affectionately as the Puzzle Palace.

One side of the Pentagon was damaged by the September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attack when a hijacked airplane was intentionally crashed into building

The crash and subsequent fore killed 184 people, including the passengers and crew of the jetliner.

The attack was coordinated with similar one on the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
Pentagon

East Turkestan Republic

2009-09-30T16:44:00.002-07:00

East Turkestan Republic
East Turkestan in modern Xinjiang has nothing to do historically with West Tujue or East Tujue. The term “East Turkestan” was first used by Russian scholars in the eighteenth century to describe the Central Asian areas belonging to China.

The Central Asian region proper was called West Turkestan – the area of Central Asia that later belonged to Russia. Such is the origin of the modern concept of “East Turkestan.”

Thus “East Turkestan” refers neither to an ethnic group nor to a country; hence it has no ethnic or national historical foundation.

In the early morning hours of November 7, 1944, Moslem Turks in China’s far northwestern province of Xinjiang attacked the Chinese garrison stationed in Yining, the principal city of the Ili valley near Sino-Soviet border.

Despite the fact that Moslem rebels were, at the outset vastly outnumbered by the Chinese troops they quickly gained effectively control of the city and within days had succeeded in forcing the Chinese into the confines of their main headquarters, the local airfield barrack, and a temple on the outskirts of the town.

Secure in their expectation of ultimate victory the Moslems declared the establishment of the East Turkestan Republic in November 12, 1944.

This new Moslem state’s declared objectives were to establish freedom and democracy for Islamic peoples of the Turk’s ancient homeland and to oust all Chinese from the whole of what they referred to as Turkestan, the Chinese province of Xinjiang.

By 1945, the military forces of the East Turkestan Republic had successfully driven Chinese troops from all towns and border posts in the three north westernmost districts of the province.

The troops pushed as far east as the Manas Rivers and were poised for an advance that would have taken them to the very gates of the provincial capital itself.

Hurried diplomatic activity and a personal appeal to the Moslems by Chiang Kai-shek led to negotiations between representatives of the independent three districts and the Chinese central government, which resulted in a peace agreement, signed by both sides in 1946.

The provisions of the Peace Agreement of 1946 – which might have led to real reform on the local level – were not fully implemented.

A major reason for this was the interference on civil government by the local Chinese military establishment on Xinjiang.
East Turkestan Republic

The Concept of Primitive War

2009-09-08T01:47:00.000-07:00

The Concept of Primitive War
In the early part of the twentieth century, the mass of unsystematic observations of pre-state societies that had accumulated during European was superseded by the new data of ethnography.

Trained in the new technique of participant observation, anthropologist went out to live with the subjects of their studies for months and even years, learned their language, and made observations of their customs and behavior with their own eyes.

The young science of anthropology had left its armchair.

Old and new data dedicated that with only rare exceptions primitive life was not particularly peaceful. It was declared, as the eminent sociologist William Sumner did at the turn of the century, that primitive man “might be descried as a peaceful animal” who “dread” war.

Ethnographers exposed primitive cultures perfectly valid and satisfying ways of being human and found that they often possessed features that were preferable to comparable aspects of Western civilized life.

Few of these ethnographers, however, and they usually lived with people who had already been pacified by Western administration.

Thus they had to rely on their informants memories of pre-contact warfare and had little opportunity to observe it directly.

But such accounts tended to idealize or bowdlerize behavior. While informants’ descriptions of many aspects of social life could be enhanced or corrected by the anthropologists’ direct observations, independent checks on their descriptions of warfare were usually impossible.

In some rare instances, ethnographers were able to observe actual primitive combat. But even these observations showed a marked bias toward pitched or formal battles.

Because such battles are the primary goal and most dramatic events of modern warfare the eyes of ethnographers were drawn to comparable clashes in the tribal societies they studies.

They noticed that these primitive battles were often suspended after only a few deaths and even of they were renewed after a brief interval – the total number killed in a series of battles was usually small.

The ethnographers seldom analyzed casualties in relation to the small numbers who fought and thus could not compare them on this basis to larger scale civilized battles.

The raids, ambushes and surprise s attacks on villages that constitute a major component of tribal warfare were seldom observed and paid little notice.

The general impression drawn from rare glimpses of formal battles was that primitive warfare was not very risky.
The Concept of Primitive War

How Britain Came to Rule The Waves During 1588 War with Spain

2009-08-14T21:58:00.001-07:00

How Britain Came to Rule The Waves During 1588 War with Spain
The Spanish lost for a simple reason: They were outgunned. The English fleet had one third more fire power, and the English were better able to utilize what they had because they had better trained crews and more efficient gun carriages.

Spanish crews did not even stay at their guns after discharging an initial blast; because of their old fashioned ideas about naval warfare, they were topside to rake the enemy docks with small arms fore, and serve in boarding parties.

The English gunners, by contrast, continued firing round after round. They were said to be there or four times more proficient in firing rate and accuracy.

England’s superiority in armaments was symptomatic of the more fundamental underlying disparity stemming from its more effective naval administration.

But even though the Navy and Ordnance Boards provided the English fleet with superior weapon and ships, its commanders still had to figure out how to make the best use of them. This took time.

The early engagements produced scant result because the effective range of English artillery was much shorter than their gunners realized.

Historian wrote that, “At ranges of three to seven hundreds yards a sixteenth century culverin (firing eighteen pound balls) or demi-culverin (firing nine pounds balls) might fail together to pierce the thick hull of a galleon or stout great-ship, and when it did would only make a small hole quickly caulked by an alert crew.”

It seems likely that Drake first realized the English guns ineffectiveness when he captured the Nuestro Senora del Rosario on August 1 and saw how little she had suffered.

The first close in attack on a Spanish ship took place two days later when an English vessel pounded the Gran Grifon from point blank range.

It is no coincidence that the ship in question was probably Drake’s revenge. This experienced showed the English commanders how to fight the Spanish.

They decided to conserve English shot until they could get close enough to make it count – “to go within musket shot of the enemy before they should discharge any one piece of ordnance.” That opportunity finally arrived in August 9 after the fireships had broken the Armada’s formidable array.

Thus a crucial element of English success was their commanders, ability to learn on the fly, make adjustments and attempt new tactics. The Spanish paid a heavy price for their lack of equal flexibility.
How Britain Came to Rule the Waves during 1588 War with Spain

Modern War

2009-07-18T11:39:00.001-07:00

Modern War
Modern war is the product of three distinct kinds of change-administrative technical and ideological. Not all of these can be seen in any straightforward was as ‘progress’, though they seem to be irreversible.

Nor have they developed at the same pace.

Military technology has produced the most striking and indeed terrifying symbols of modern war: the machine gun, the rocket, the atomic bomb.

The increased in power and sophistication of weapon system has been exponential.

Between the first general adoption of efficient forearms in these seventeenth century and the production of breech-loading guns and smokeless propellants in the middle of the nineteenth, the pace of change was slow.

Improvements in technique (professionalism, training, and tactics), rather in technology, brought the most substantial results. Later the balance altered.

Technological change may appear to be an independent process, governed only by an extent of scientific knowledge and the limits of science and manufacturing.

But military institutions have tended to be conservative than other social groups. Soldiers have seldom been in the forefront of technological development, and more often reluctant to welcome new weapons.

Tradition has always been important in fostering the esprit de corps of fighting units, and can lead to fossilization.

So can the tendency – actually increased by professionalization, which removed young princes and nobles from high command – for senior officers to be substantially older than their junior.

They are many striking examples of failure to embrace new technology, none perhaps more disastrous than that of the imperial Chinese navy, which could have had the world’s most advanced naval artillery in the early sixteenth century, but rejected it in favor of traditional ramming and boarding tactics.
Modern War

The Creation of Prussian Army and Prussian State

2009-07-04T21:03:00.000-07:00

The Creation of Prussian Army and Prussian State
Frederick William, the Great Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia (1640-88), was one of the European princes who made the most effective use of the techniques of absolutism.

In 1640 he inherited a scattered and ungovernable collection of territories that had been devastated by the Thirty Year’s War.

Brandenburg, the richest of his possessions, had lost nearly half of its population.

The war had lasting impact upon Frederick William’s character.

A long stay, in Holland during the final stages of the Dutch revolt impressed upon him the importance of a strong army and a strong base of revenue to support it.

Frederick William had neither. In 1640 has forces totaled no more than 2,500 men, most of them, including the officers, the dregs of German society.

Despite the fact that he was surrounded by powerful neighbors – Sweden and Poland both claimed sovereignty over parts of inheritance – the territories under his control had no tradition of military taxation.

The nobility, known as die Junker, enjoyed immunity from almost all forms of direct taxation, and the towns had no obligation to furnish either men or supplies for military operations beyond their walls.

When Frederick William attempted to introduce an excise, he was initially rebuffed. But military emergency overcame legal precedents,

By the 1650s Frederick William had established the excise in the towns though not on the land.

With the excise as a steady source of revenue, the Great Elector could now create one of the most capable standing armies of the age.

He built his forces in stages, careful not to frighten his powerful eastern neighbors.

The geographical scattering of his territory was a benefit. He could raise and train his troops in the west without endangering his security in the east.

The strictest discipline was maintained in the new army and the Prussian army developed into a feared and efficient fighting machine.

Frederick William organized one of the first departments of war to oversee all of the details of the creation of his army, from housing and supplies to the training of young officer candidates.

By the time Frederick William died, the army had grown to over thirty thousand and state revenue had triple.

The creation of the Prussian army was a force that led to the creation of the Prussian state.
The Creation of Prussian Army and Prussian State

War in History

2009-06-20T06:01:00.000-07:00

War in History
War has been a sensational topic. Warfare concentrates and intensifies some of our strongest emotions; courage and fear, resignation and panic, selfishness and self-sacrifice, greed and generosity, patriotism and xenophobia.

The stimulus of war has incited human beings to prodigies of ingenuity, improvisation, cooperation, vandalism and cruelty.

It is the riskiest field on which to match wits and luck: no peaceful endeavor can equal its penalties for failure, and few can exceed its rewards for success.

It remains the most theatrical of human activities combining tragedy, high drama, melodrama, spectacle, action, farce and even low comedy.

War displays the human condition in extremes.

It is thus not surprising that the first recovered histories, the first written accounts of the exploits of mortals, are military histories.

The earliest Egyptian hieroglyphs record the victories of Egypt’s first pharaohs, the Scorpion King and Narmer.

The first secular literature or history recorded in cuneiform recounts the adventures of the Sumerian warrior king Gilgamesh.

The earliest written part of the Books f Moses, the “J-strand”, culminate in the brutal Hebrew conquest of Canaan.

The annals of the Chinese, Greeks, and Roman are concerned with wars and warrior king.

Most Mayan hieroglyphic texts are devoted to the genealogies, biographies and military exploits of Mayan kings.
War in History

The English Revolutions

2009-05-08T19:22:00.000-07:00

The English Revolutions
In June 1647 soldiers kidnapped the king and demanded that parliament pay their arrears, protect them from legal retribution, and recognize their service to the nation.

Those in Parliament who opposed the army’s intervention were impeached and when London Presbyterians rose up against the army’s show of force, troop move in town occupy the city.

The civil war, which had come so close to resolution in 1647, had now become a military revolution.

Religious and political radicals flocked to the army and encouraged the soldier to support their programs and to resist disbandment.

New fighting broke out in 1648 as King Charles encouraged his supporters to resume war.

But forces under the command of Sir Thomas Fairfax (1612 – 71) and Oliver Crompton (1599 – 1658) easily crushed the royalist uprisings in England and Scotland.

The army now demanded that Charles 1 be brought to justice for his treacherous conduct both before and during the war.

When the majority in the Parliament refused, still hoping against hope to reach an accommodation with the king, the soldiers again acted decisively.

In December 1648 army regiments were sent to London to purge the two houses of Parliament of those who opposed the army’s demands.

The remaining members, contemptuously called the Rump Parliament, voted to bring the king to trial for his crimes against the liberty of his subjects.

On 30 January 1649, Charles 1 was executed and England was declared to be Commonwealth.

The monarchy and the House of Lords were abolished and the nation was to be governed by what was left of the membership of the House of Commons.
The English Revolutions