'I couldn't see the tank. I couldn't see it... Someone was screaming over the radio. "Scream all you want, I still can't see it," I said to my pilot. The next explosion was so close it lifted my chest armour off my body in the shock wave. The noise brought me back to my awful reality. I looked out of the sight to see the shattered cockpit glass. The next one would be it and we knew it.' Lieutenant Commander James Newton survived and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his bravery. In a career that has seen him on operations over Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Northern Ireland and most recently Iraq, Newton is no stranger to being shot at. He has flown all the aircraft the Navy has and even ones it doesn't. Thrilling, fast-paced and an adrenaline-fuelled adventure, Armed Action is a fascinating insight into life in the air.

In 1950, when he commissioned the first edition of The Armed Forces Officer, Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall told its author, S.L.A. Marshall, that "American military officers, of whatever service, should share common ground ethically and morally." In this new edition, the authors methodically explore that common ground, reflecting on the basics of the Profession of Arms, and the officer's special place and distinctive obligations within that profession and especially to the Constitution.

Based on no-holds-barred interviews with active armed robbers in St. Louis, Missouri, this groundbreaking volume sheds new light on the process of committing armed robbery.

In this magnificent synthesis of military, technological, and social history, William H. McNeill explores a whole millennium of human upheaval and traces the path by which we have arrived at the frightening dilemmas that now confront us. McNeill moves with equal mastery from the crossbow—banned by the Church in 1139 as too lethal for Christians to use against one another—to the nuclear missile, from the sociological consequences of drill in the seventeenth century to the emergence of the military-industrial complex in the twentieth. His central argument is that a commercial transformation of world society in the eleventh century caused military activity to respond increasingly to market forces as well as to the commands of rulers. Only in our own time, suggests McNeill, are command economies replacing the market control of large-scale human effort. The Pursuit of Power does not solve the problems of the present, but its discoveries, hypotheses, and sheer breadth of learning do offer a perspective on our current fears and, as McNeill hopes, "a ground for wiser action."

To bridge the widening gap between the theory and practice of the law, Modern Warfare brings together both scholars and practitioners who offer unique, and often divergent, perspectives on four key challenges to the law's legitimacy: how to ensure compliance among non-state armed groups; the proliferation of private military and security companies and their use by humanitarian organizations; tensions between the idea of humanitarian space and counterinsurgency doctrines; and the phenomenon of urban violence. The contributors do not simply consider settled legal standards - they widen the scope to include first principles, related bodies of law, humanitarian policy, and the latest studies on the prevention and mitigation of violence."--Pub. desc.

This book examines to what extent the right of self-defence, as laid down in Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, permits States to launch military operations against other States. In particular, it focuses on the occurrence of an 'armed attack' - the crucial trigger for the activation of this right. In light of the developments since 9/11, the author analyses relevant physical and verbal customary practice, ranging from the 1974 Definition of Aggression to recent incidents such as the 2001 US intervention in Afghanistan and the 2006 Israeli intervention in Lebanon. The notion of 'armed attack' is examined from a threefold perspective. What acts can be regarded as an 'armed attack'? When can an 'armed attack' be considered to take place? And from whom must an 'armed attack' emanate? By way of conclusion, the different findings are brought together in a draft 'Definition of Armed Attack'.