Top products from r/CredibleDefense

We found 28 product mentions on r/CredibleDefense. We ranked the 88 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

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Top comments that mention products on r/CredibleDefense:

u/cleaningotis · 7 pointsr/CredibleDefense

If you want to understand the nature of the war and the strategy used to fight it from the surge (2007) onward I recommend David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War by Fred Kaplan. This book will describe all the big names and texts that helped formulate modern counterinsurgency doctrine and will give you plenty of authors and publications to further explore. To further understand counterinsurgency, I recommend The Accidental Guerilla by David Kilcullen (this link downloads the file, it does not open it a new window) that has a great chapter on Iraq since he was the senior COIN advisor for a few months into the surge. You can also read FM3-24 the original 2006 version, but its a dense read and I recommend you familiarize yourself with the doctrine through other publications before tackling the field manual itself.

Fiasco by Thomas Ricks is a decent history of the run up to the Iraq war and the first years, I would say 2002-2005 is where it is strongest although it does discuss important history prior to 9/11 in the containment of Iraq and some detail into 2006.

From the Surge onward I recommend Ricks' follow on book The Gamble, and The Surge by Peter Mansoor. These books will detail the important changes and in strategy and operational practices that characterized the Surge and the post 2006 war effort.

These are the books I have personally read that best address your questions. Books that are more tactically oriented instead of focusing on the big picture include The Forever War by Dexter Filkins, which is a morbid book that does justice to the horror of the Iraq's sectarian civil war. Thunder Run by David Zucchino is worthy of being a masterpiece in terms of how well the author constructed an incredible narrative on the tank forays into the heart of Baghdad in the early weeks of the war. My Share of the Task by Stanley McChrystal is a great read on McChrystal fomented a significant evolution in JSOC's intelligence culture and operational tempo. This book is of value specifically to what you asked because his men were the ones that were tracking Abu Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and was the first iteration of what is now known as ISIS. McChrystal describes the structure of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and much of ISIS's organization and methods can be traced back to Zarqawi's leadership.

I don't think you will find any books that will do justice to your interest in terms of recent events however I have some advice that I feel will help you immensely. Simply type in (topic of interest) and end it with pdf into google. This cuts out brief news articles and wikipedia entries and leaves you with top notch reports published by peer reviewed journals and think tanks. This is all free, and its very well researched work.

A report I'm currently reading that I'm sure you will find interesting is Iraq in Crisis by CSIS. It's of course long for a think tank report, but it has a lot of information and great statistics and charts that help the reader better understand Iraq's trends in violence and other challenges. Here are two more interesting reports by well known think tanks that pertinent to what you are looking for.

On the evolution of Al Qaeda and other salafi jihadists by RAND

Iraqi politics, governance and human rights by the Congressional Research Service

u/No-Coast-Punk · 2 pointsr/CredibleDefense

http://www.amazon.com/Bleeding-Talent-Military-Mismanages-Revolution/dp/0230391273

A slightly related book is this. It gets into fairly decent detail about how the current personnel system fails to promote any type of real innovative thinkers.

Innovative thinking at its very heart involves thinking outside of the scope of established procedure and often results in mistakes.

We now live in a world where a single honest mistake by a talented and well meaning officer is a career ender.

This isn't a system that will foster the best and brightest.

u/x_TC_x · 1 pointr/CredibleDefense

Predecessors of what became Jabhat an-Nusra were active in Iraq of the 2000s. Some of them returned to Syria already in summer 2011, originally with intention of establishing something like the local branch of the AQI (later ISIL/ISIS, then IS etc.).

Ahrar came into being as an umbrella organization of numerous small Islamist, Salafist, and even a few Wahhabist groups. While most of these were established in 2012, their name stems from a group that became active in summer 2011.

Recommended reading in this regards is Lister's The Syrian Jihad: he's really going to great extension into explaining the coming into being of all such groups.

u/[deleted] · 5 pointsr/CredibleDefense

If you're interested in the subject, you might want to pick up Skunk Works by Ben Rich, who started as a young engineer under Kelly Johnson and eventually went on to run the place after Johnson retired. It's a pretty good read, covering everything from the A-12 OXCART on up to the B-2, and available used pretty cheap.

u/quanticle · 2 pointsr/CredibleDefense

John Nagl's Learning To Eat Soup With A Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam is a great read. Nagl contrasts the successful British counterinsurgency in Malaya with the unsuccessful US counterinsurgency in Vietnam and tries to analyze what lessons the US military can take to be more successful at counterinsurgency in the future.

u/BigBennP · 10 pointsr/CredibleDefense

> Stealth isn't some sort of get out of jail free card that let's you ignore air defenses

THis.

Stealth simply reduces the radar cross section of an aircraft. Many dedicated stealth aircraft also have methods to reduce the infrared signature and the sound signature.

If you read "Skunk Works" book by Ben Rich, it has a great lay mans explanation of how this works in terms of aircraft.

Radar works by essentially creating an electronic "ping" and then listening for the echo when it bounces off distant objects.

Anything will generate some echo. Square lines and big flat metal surfaces reflect radar the most.

Rounded surfaces or angled surfaces can reflect radar away from the reciever, so that even if an echo is generated, some of it gets bounced somewhere else.

Certain substances like wood, or certain composites, tend to absorb more radar than they send back.

All of these reduce the radar cross section.

Something like an F-15 is like a literal "barn door" on a radar screen. The big square intakes, square fins, etc. create big flat surfaces.

The SR71, which was incidentally stealthy, initially at least by accident, has the cross section of a much much smaller aircraft, like a small cessna. It can be picked up by radar, but it's so high and so fast, usually it's out of radar range before anything can be done about it.

The F117 is the size of a large bird on a radar return. You have to have a very high powered radar, very close, to pick it up. It also is subsonic only and has ducted engines which reduces it's infrared signature.

The B2, despite it's size, is even smaller than the F117, with the assitance of computer aided design. Kelly Johnson desicribed this as the difference between an Eagle and an Eagle's Eyeball.

The radar returns of the F22 and the F35 are classified, but given they are trade offs between performance and stealth, probably are closer to the F117 than the B2. Low observable, but not completely undetectable.


And like /u/darthpizza notes, not all radars react the same way. A very low frequency radar may pick up some things that a normal high frequency radar might not. However, low frequency radars have their drawbacks.


u/thane_of_cawdor · 5 pointsr/CredibleDefense

The Dictator's Army: Battlefield Effectiveness in Authoritarian Regimes by Caitlin Talmadge

The RAND monograph Why the Iraqi Resistance to the Coalition Invasion Was So Weak by Stephen Hosmer offers an overview of why Saddam's coup-proofing weakened the Iraqi Military and then gives a surprising amount of detail on specific examples with some very funny anecdotes regarding Uday and Qusay. :)

The Syrian Jihad by Charles Lister has some great information about the SAA's effectiveness during the Syrian civil war 2011-2015 if you're willing to wade through a lot of information about small jihadi groups.

Saddam Husayn and Civil-Military Relations in Iraq: The Quest for Legitimacy and Power by Ahmed Hashim has some great info on Saddam's defense policy of coup-proofing and its effects on military effectiveness.

The Iraqi Army and Anti-Army: Some Reflections on the Role of the Military by Faleh Jabar addresses much of the same things as Hashim's piece.

Finally, Iraq's Armed Forces: An Analytical History by Ibrahim al-Marashi and Sammy Salama is a broad overview of Iraq's military.

u/StudyingTerrorism · 6 pointsr/CredibleDefense

I have a long list of books that I usually recommend to people who are interested in these types of subjects. Here are some that may be of interest to you. If you are ever interested in more books on the Middle East or international affairs issues, check out the r/geopolitics wiki.

As for the books that have been recommended to you, they are pretty good. I even repeated a few of them in my recommendations. The only ones that I would have reservations about are Gen. Daniel Bolger's because I have never read it.

Author | Title | Synopsis
---|---|----
Daniel Byman | Al Qaeda, the Islamic State, and the Global Jihadist Movement: What Everyone Needs to Know | A terrific primer on al-Qaida, ISIL, and jihadism. Its a brief outline of the history of al-Qaida, its ideological underpinnings, and the rise of ISIL in the shadow of the Syrian Civil War.
Lawrence Wright | The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 | Probably the most approachable and argueably the best book for outlining the pro-9/11 history of al-Qaida and why 9/11 happened.
Michael Wiess and Hassan Hassan | ISIS: Inside the Army of Terror | One of several recent books on ISIL, this one provides an overview on the history and organization of ISIL.
Charles Lister | The Syrian Jihad: Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Evolution of an Insurgency | Written by an expert on jihadism in Syria, this books looks at the history and evolution of jihadists in the Syrian conflict.
Jessica Stern and J.M. Berger | ISIS: The State of Terror | Written by two top experts in the study of terrorism, this book focuses on how ISIL radicalizes and recruits individuals from all over the world to join their cause.
William McCants | The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State | An examination of ISIL's worldview and how it influenced its growth and strategy.
Kenneth Pollack | The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America | An excellent overview of the history of relations and tensions between the United States and Iran over the decades. Pollack published a second book on U.S.-Iranian relations in the wake of Iran's nuclear program called Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb, and American Strategy
Bob Woodward | Obama's Wars | Outline of the U.S. foreign policy decision making towards Iraq and Afghanistan in the early years of the Obama administration.
Michael R. Gordon | The Endgame: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Iraq, from George W. Bush to Barack Obama | Follows U.S. strategic and political decision making process during the Iraq War and the U.S. occupation.
Peter R. Mansoor | Surge: My Journey with General David Petraeus and the Remaking of the Iraq War | An extensive outline of the development and outcome of the Surge during the U.S. Occupation of Iraq.
Mark Mazzetti | The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth | An overview of the CIA's targeted drone program against terrorist organizations.
Michael Morrell | The Great War of Our Time: The CIA's Fight Against Terrorism--From al Qa'ida to ISIS | Written by the former acting director of the CIA, this book examines U.S. counterterrorism successes and failures of the past two decades.

u/the_georgetown_elite · 16 pointsr/CredibleDefense

You should check out the book Desert Warrior by the Saudi general Khaled bin Sultan if you're interested in this stuff. He and Schwarzkopf were both the equal-ranked Joint Forces Commander during Desert Storm, with Schwarzkopf having responsibility over Western armies and bin Sultan being responsible for keeping the Arab armies working well together.

An interesting tidbit from this conflict is that Israel purposefully played no military role, so that the other Arab states would not get upset fighting allied with Israel against another Arab state. This is of course why Saddam Hussein fired a bunch of scuds at Israeli cities, to try to goad them into entering the war and try to cause the truly miraculous alliance of Western and Arab states to fragment. It didn't work for Saddam in the end.

u/machinesNpbr · 3 pointsr/CredibleDefense

David Kilcullen has done some exceptional thinking on this topic recently. His newest book, Out of the Mountains, is a superb wide-ranging framing of megacity conflict, both sociologically, strategically, and tactically.

This lecture vid quickly outlines the book's ideas very well.

u/throwdemawaaay · 2 pointsr/CredibleDefense

In 1996 synchronous systolic arrays made sense for signal processing. That hasn't been the case for decades now. Bulk synchronous parallel algorithms are ideal on gpus, which have obviated things like the paper you linked above.

I don't have time to go into detail, but just on the first page they quote 7.7gflop raw. Current GPUs offer thousands of gflops. There are very few application areas where ASICs are still warranted.

I'd suggest reading H&P for a solid general overview of things.

u/alphex · 5 pointsr/CredibleDefense

Reading a great book right now, Blind Mans Bluff.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0089EMLGK/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?ie=UTF8&btkr=1

This is exactly right.

During Vietnam the USSR had subs tailing US CAG's with nuclear weapons...

The Sub force was meant to survive the initial exchange, and respond in kind. As theoretically, they were travelling undetected and safe from the initial strikes.

u/Iznik · 3 pointsr/CredibleDefense

And your details can be therefore be found here in the About the Author section. For my part, it looks like the definition of an expert!

u/Oscar_Geare · 4 pointsr/CredibleDefense

He's Austrian, I believe.

This was an interesting conversation to follow.

u/RallyCrap · 2 pointsr/CredibleDefense

The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War is more about Petraeus and a small group of officers who came to accept COIN, their ideas (and where they came from), their battle to turn their thoughts into policy, and the effect they had on the Iraq War, particularly "the surge."

u/studdbeefpile · 15 pointsr/CredibleDefense

More of a question than a comment, but looking at the last couple decades, I'd say we're seeing more urban combat than ever before in history. As more and more of the world's population moves into large cities, this trend seems only likely to increase. Assuming that these trends and predictions are accurate, what does that imply for the future of armor, which has traditionally been at its lowest value in urban situations. Will we see a return of assault guns, which can be more easily armored all sides? a decline in the use of armor? Basically, what do you do to adapt armor to an urban, man portable anti tank rich environment?

u/Rhomaion · 6 pointsr/CredibleDefense

I haven't read this book, but suggesting that the USA's geopolitical control rests exclusively, or primarily, on her military power seems a little short sighted. It kind of seems to betray the effects of American consumption of goods and the proliferation of capital into foreign nations. The soft power of economy is just as decisive as the bayonet.

Edit ~ For a nice treatment on this subject, Amsden's "Escape from Empire" offers an analysis of the power of the American economic "empire", if you can overlook some of its arguments. There's some good reason to suspect that America will actually begin to lag behind foreign powers; and Friedman seems to take for granted that China's power structure isn't capable of adapting to change and structural inequalities. I'll stop making assumptions until I read his book, though.

u/thizzacre · 5 pointsr/CredibleDefense

You're right about people ignoring Africa. The deadliest conflict of the 21st century, and I bet not many people could even name the belligerents in the Second Congo War, which still isn't entirely resolved. And I hate to be a pessimist, but border disputes are likely to get even more heated if China really does manage to set off another "Scramble for Africa."

Gérard Prunier's book Africa's World War is a fair look at the war and its origins.