Congress Buys a Navy

Congress Buys a Navy
Author: Paul Pedisich
Publisher: US Naval Institute Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: Civil-military relations
ISBN: 9781682470770

Congress Buys a Navy offers a new look at the nexus of American politics, economics, and the funding and creation of what is thought of as the "modern" U.S. Navy. Filling in significant gaps in prior economic histories of the era, Paul Pedisich analyzes the roles nine presidencies and cabinets, sixteen Navy secretaries, and countless U.S. congressmen have played in shaping and funding our maritime forces. In the years following the American Civil War, the peacetime Navy deteriorated considerably. By 1881 the legislature earmarked virtually all of its naval appropriations to expensive repair work to maintain decrepit wooden and iron ships. Congress reversed that direction at the end of its final session in March 1883 and began building a new Navy by approving the construction of a few modern steam-driven steel warships. Initially, events in the Caribbean and South America, along with U.S. business interests in international trade, provided a stimulus for increased naval expenditures for ships and shore facilities. Thanks to the legislative actions of the twenty congresses that met from 1881 to 1921, the Navy was transformed from a perceived embarrassment to the United States to one of the best fighting forces in the world. Although Navy officers prepared extensive annual recommendations for fleet composition and increases, they were not principal decision makers. Pedisich's narrative begins with President James Garfield's appointment of William Hunt as Secretary of the Navy and the formation of the Forty-seventh Congress in March 1881, and continues on to the reduction of naval forces by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. While the main acts in U.S. political history often privilege the actions of the president and his cabinet, Pedisich brings to light the individual rationales, voting blocs, agendas, and political intrigue that drove this process of making a modern Navy. -- Inside jacket flaps.

Buying Military Transformation

Buying Military Transformation
Author: Peter J. Dombrowski
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2006
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 023113570X

In Buying Military Transformation, Peter Dombrowski and Eugene Gholz analyze the United States military's ongoing effort to capitalize on information technology. New ideas about military doctrine derived from comparisons to Internet Age business practices can be implemented only if the military buys technologically innovative weapons systems. Buying Military Transformation examines how political and military leaders work with the defense industry to develop the small ships, unmanned aerial vehicles, advanced communications equipment, and systems-of-systems integration that will enable the new military format. Dombrowski and Gholz's analysis integrates the political relationship between the defense industry and Congress, the bureaucratic relationship between the firms and the military services, and the technical capabilities of different types of businesses. Many government officials and analysts believe that only entrepreneurial start-up firms or leaders in commercial information technology markets can produce the new, network-oriented military equipment. But Dombrowski and Gholz find that the existing defense industry will be best able to lead military-technology development, even for equipment modeled on the civilian Internet. The U.S. government is already spending billions of dollars each year on its "military transformation" program-money that could be easily misdirected and wasted if policymakers spend it on the wrong projects or work with the wrong firms. In addition to this practical implication, Buying Military Transformation offers key lessons for the theory of "Revolutions in Military Affairs." A series of military analysts have argued that major social and economic changes, like the shift from the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age, inherently force related changes in the military. Buying Military Transformation undermines this technologically determinist claim: commercial innovation does not directly determine military innovation; instead, political leadership and military organizations choose the trajectory of defense investment. Militaries should invest in new technology in response to strategic threats and military leaders' professional judgments about the equipment needed to improve military effectiveness. Commercial technological progress by itself does not generate an imperative for military transformation. Clear, cogent, and engaging, Buying Military Transformation is essential reading for journalists, legislators, policymakers, and scholars.

The Chinese Navy

The Chinese Navy
Author: Institute for National Strategic Studies
Publisher: Government Printing Office
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2011-12-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780160897634

Tells the story of the growing Chinese Navy - The People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) - and its expanding capabilities, evolving roles and military implications for the USA. Divided into four thematic sections, this special collection of essays surveys and analyzes the most important aspects of China's navel modernization.

Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy

Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy
Author: Ian W. Toll
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 585
Release: 2008-02-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 039333032X

From the decision to build six heavy frigates through the cliffhanger campaign against Tripoli to the war that shook the world in 1812, Toll tells the grand tale of the founding of the U.S. Navy.

Selling Sea Power

Selling Sea Power
Author: Ryan D. Wadle
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2019-03-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0806164204

The accepted narrative of the interwar U.S. Navy is one of transformation from a battle-centric force into a force that could fight on the “three planes” of war: in the skies, on the water, and under the waves. The political and cultural tumult that accompanied this transformation is another story. Ryan D. Wadle’s Selling Sea Power explores this little-known but critically important aspect of naval history. After World War I, the U.S. Navy faced numerous challenges: a call for naval arms limitation, the ascendancy of air power, and budgetary constraints exacerbated by the Great Depression. Selling Sea Power tells the story of how the navy met these challenges by engaging in protracted public relations campaigns at a time when the means and methods of reaching the American public were undergoing dramatic shifts. While printed media continued to thrive, the rapidly growing film and radio industries presented new means by which the navy could connect with politicians and the public. Deftly capturing the institutional nuances and the personalities in play, Wadle tracks the U.S. Navy’s at first awkward but ultimately successful manipulation of mass media. At the same time, he analyzes what the public could actually see of the service in the variety of media available to them, including visual examples from progressively more sophisticated—and effective—public relations campaigns. Integrating military policy and strategy with the history of American culture and politics, Selling Sea Power offers a unique look at the complex links between the evolution of the art and industry of persuasion and the growth of the modern U.S. Navy, as well as the connections between the workings of communications and public relations and the command of military and political power.

Billy Mitchell's War with the Navy

Billy Mitchell's War with the Navy
Author: Thomas Wildenberg
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2014-02-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1612513328

When Billy Mitchell returned from WWI, he brought with him the deep-seated belief that air power had made navies obsolete. However, in the years following WWI, the U.S. Congress was far more interested in disarmament and isolationist policies than in funding national defense. For the military services this meant lean budgets and skeleton operating forces. Billy Mitchell’s War with the Navy recounts the intense political struggle between the Army and Navy air arms for the limited resources needed to define and establish the role of aviation within their respective services in the period between the two world wars. After Congress rejected the concept of a unified air service in 1920, Mitchell and his supporters turned on the Navy, seeking to substitute the Air Service as the nation's first line of defense. While Mitchell proved that aircraft could sink a battleship with the bombing of the Ostfriesland in 1921, he was unable to convince the General Staff of the Army, the General Board of the Navy, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, or Congress of the need for an independent air force. When Mitchell turned to the pen to discredit the Navy, he was convicted by his own words and actions in a court-martial that captivated the nation, and was forced to resign in 1925. Rather than ending the rivalry for air power, Mitchell’s resignation set the stage for the ongoing dispute between the two services in the years immediately before WWII. After Mitchell’s resignation, the rivalry for air power between the two services resurfaced when the Navy's plans to procure torpedo planes for the defense of Pearl Harbor and Coco Solo were brought to the attention of the Army. The book concludes with a description of the events surrounding the Air Corps' abysmal performance at Pearl Harbor and Midway followed by a critical assessment of how the development of aviation was pursued by the Army and the Navy after WWII.

The Greatest U.S. Navy Stories Ever Told

The Greatest U.S. Navy Stories Ever Told
Author: Iain Martin
Publisher: Globe Pequot
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2006
Genre: United States
ISBN: 9781592288595

The amazing experiences of Americas proud sailors from the birth of the US Navy to todays operations around the globe From the highly successful "Greatest Stories Ever Told" series--over 150000 in print!

Proceeding of the VI International Ship Design & Naval Engineering Congress (CIDIN) and XXVI Pan-American Congress of Naval Engineering, Maritime Transportation and Port Engineering (COPINAVAL)

Proceeding of the VI International Ship Design & Naval Engineering Congress (CIDIN) and XXVI Pan-American Congress of Naval Engineering, Maritime Transportation and Port Engineering (COPINAVAL)
Author: Vice Admiral Jorge Enrique Carreño Moreno
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 459
Release: 2020-03-10
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 3030359638

This book presents the proceedings of CIDIN and COPINAVAL. The papers present the development of the navy, maritime and riverine industry, contributing to the scientific and technological progress and development in the sector. In 2019 the congresses occurred in Cartagena, Colombia, a reference for science and technology innovation for Latin-American naval industry.

Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans

Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans
Author: Ronald O'Rourke
Publisher:
Total Pages: 145
Release: 2020-11-14
Genre:
ISBN:

Updated 12/10/2020: In December 2016, the Navy released a force-structure goal that callsfor achieving and maintaining a fleet of 355 ships of certain types and numbers. The 355-shipgoal was made U.S. policy by Section 1025 of the FY2018 National Defense AuthorizationAct (H.R. 2810/P.L. 115- 91 of December 12, 2017). The Navy and the Department of Defense(DOD) have been working since 2019 to develop a successor for the 355-ship force-level goal.The new goal is expected to introduce a new, more distributed fleet architecture featuring asmaller proportion of larger ships, a larger proportion of smaller ships, and a new third tier oflarge unmanned vehicles (UVs). On December 9, 2020, the Trump Administration released a document that can beviewed as its vision for future Navy force structure and/or a draft version of the FY202230-year Navy shipbuilding plan. The document presents a Navy force-level goal that callsfor achieving by 2045 a Navy with a more distributed fleet architecture, 382 to 446 mannedships, and 143 to 242 large UVs. The Administration that takes office on January 20, 2021,is required by law to release the FY2022 30-year Navy shipbuilding plan in connection withDOD's proposed FY2022 budget, which will be submitted to Congress in 2021. In preparingthe FY2022 30-year shipbuilding plan, the Administration that takes office on January 20,2021, may choose to adopt, revise, or set aside the document that was released on December9, 2020. The Navy states that its original FY2021 budget submission requests the procurement ofeight new ships, but this figure includes LPD-31, an LPD-17 Flight II amphibious ship thatCongress procured (i.e., authorized and appropriated procurement funding for) in FY2020.Excluding this ship, the Navy's original FY2021 budget submission requests the procurementof seven new ships rather than eight. In late November 2020, the Trump Administrationreportedly decided to request the procurement of a second Virginia-class attack submarinein FY2021. CRS as of December 10, 2020, had not received any documentation from theAdministration detailing the exact changes to the Virginia-class program funding linesthat would result from this reported change. Pending the delivery of that information fromthe administration, this CRS report continues to use the Navy's original FY2021 budgetsubmission in its tables and narrative discussions.

When Computers Went to Sea

When Computers Went to Sea
Author: David L. Boslaugh
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 504
Release: 2003-04-16
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9780471472209

When Computers Went to Sea explores the history of the United States Navy's secret development of code-breaking computers and their adaptation to solve a critical fleet radar data handling problem in the Navy's first seaborne digital computer system - that went to sea in 1962. This is the only book written on the United States Navy's initial application of shipboard digital computers to naval warfare. Considered one of the most successful projects ever undertaken by the US Navy, the Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS) was the subject of numerous studies attempting to pinpoint the reason for the systems inordinate success in the face of seemingly impossible technical challenges and stiff resistance from some in the military. The system's success precipitated a digital revolution in naval warfare systems. Dave Boslaugh details the innovations developed by the NTDS project managers including: project management techniques, modular digital hardware for ship systems, top-down modular computer programming techniques, innovative computer program documentation, and other novel real-time computer system concepts. Automated military systems users and developers, real-time process control systems designers, automated system project managers, and digital technology history students will find this account of a United States military organization's initial foray into computerization interesting and thought provoking.