By nature, competent decisions by emergency responders are challenging because incidents are fluid and dynamic. In Critical Decision Making, Chief Michael Barakey gives emergency first responders the tools to succeed on every incident where they make critical decisions and mitigate incidents daily under stress. This book reviews cases to identify common incident elements that hinder quality decision making, and it introduces point-to-point leadership, a systematic approach to making critical decisions from the time responders are alerted to an incident to its resolution. Understanding how to make critical decisions in this dynamic process is what makes great leaders. WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING: “For years, fire rescue training programs have only addressed the concept of critical decision making in a limited way. Chief Barakey tackles this mission critical process in a straight forward, direct, comprehensive and understandable way...A tip of the helmet to Chief Barakey and Fire Engineering Books for delivering such a practical and impactful book.” —Dennis L. Rubin, Fire Rescue author “I have had the pleasure of working both professionally and personally with Chief Barakey for more than 25 years. Mike helped me better understand the daily operations of managing a hazardous materials response team. He has crafted a great resource for first responders interested in developing or improving their ability to make critical decisions during the most stressful situations. This step by step process is required reading for anyone that has the task of making critical decisions either on the strategic, tactical, or task level.” —Murrey Loflin, Battalion Chief (Retired), Virginia Beach Fire Department and federal fatality investigator “Chief Barakey shares how to blend education, experience and opportunity and develop skills on the smaller incidents where most of us get a second chance to command and learn. He has always been a proponent of sending the elevator back down to show others the best way to move up … Now is the time for your second chance at incident command and emergency service leadership. Read this book and use your second chance while you have it.” —Stephen Miles, retired Battalion Chief of Safety from the Virginia Beach Fire Department and federal fatality investigator

The most comprehensive account to date of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon and aftermath, this volume includes unprecedented details on the impact on the Pentagon building and personnel and the scope of the rescue, recovery, and caregiving effort. It features 32 pages of photographs and more than a dozen diagrams and illustrations not previously available.

Contents: (1) Intro.; (2) Background: Rationale for the PGS Mission; PGS and the U.S. Strategic Command; Potential Targets for the PGS Mission; Conventional BM and the PGS Mission; (3) Plans and Programs: Navy Programs: Reentry Vehicle Research; Conventional Trident Modification; Sub.-Launched Intermediate-Range BM; Air Force Programs: The FALCON Study; Reentry Vehicle Research and Warhead Options; Missile Options; Defense-Wide Conventional PGS: The Conventional Strike Missile; Hypersonic Test Vehicle; Army Advanced Hypersonic Weapon; ArcLight; (4) Issues for Congress: Assessing the Rationale for CPGS; Reviewing the Alternatives; Arms Control Issues. A print on demand report.

Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), the U.S.-led coalition military operation in Iraq, was launched on March 20, 2003, with the goal of removing Saddam Hussein¿s regime and destroying its ability to use weapons of mass destruction. The focus of OIF has shifted from regime removal to helping the Gov¿t. of Iraq improve security, establish a system of governance, and foster economic development. This report addresses these policy issues: Identifying how U.S. national interests and strategic objectives, in Iraq and the region, should guide further U.S. engagement; Monitoring and evaluating the impact of the changes in the U.S. presence and role in Iraq; and Laying the groundwork for a traditional bilateral relationship. Map. A print on demand report.

Drawing on a wealth of new evidence from all sides, Triumph Forsaken, first published in 2007, overturns most of the historical orthodoxy on the Vietnam War. Through the analysis of international perceptions and power, it shows that South Vietnam was a vital interest of the United States. The book provides many insights into the overthrow of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1963 and demonstrates that the coup negated the South Vietnamese government's tremendous, and hitherto unappreciated, military and political gains between 1954 and 1963. After Diem's assassination, President Lyndon Johnson had at his disposal several aggressive policy options that could have enabled South Vietnam to continue the war without a massive US troop infusion, but he ruled out these options because of faulty assumptions and inadequate intelligence, making such an infusion the only means of saving the country.

The author describes the reasons why humanitarian military interventions succeed or fail, basing his analysis on the interventions carried out in the 1990s in Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Kosovo, and East Timor.

World events in recent years have led observers, particularly since late 2013, to conclude that the international security environment in recent years has undergone a shift from the post-Cold War era that began in the late 1980s and early 1990s, also sometimes known as the unipolar moment (with the United States as the unipolar power), to a new and different situation that features, among other things, renewed great power competition with China and Russia and challenges by these two countries and others to elements of the U.S.-led international order that has operated since World War II. The shift to renewed great power competition has become a major factor in the debate over future U.S. defense spending levels, and has led to new or renewed emphasis on the following in discussions of U.S. defense strategy, plans, and programs: * grand strategy and geopolitics as part of the context for discussing U.S. defense budgets, plans, and programs; * nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence;* new U.S. military service operational concepts;* U.S. and NATO military capabilities in Europe;* capabilities for conducting so-called high-end conventional warfare (i.e., largescale, high-intensity, technologically sophisticated warfare) against countries such as China and Russia; * maintaining U.S. technological superiority in conventional weapons;* speed of weapon system development and deployment as a measure of merit in defense acquisition policy;* mobilization capabilities for an extended-length large-scale conflict against an adversary such as China or Russia;* minimizing reliance in U.S. military systems on components and materials from Russia and China; and* capabilities for countering so-called hybrid warfare and gray-zone tactics employed by countries such as Russia and China.