The Naval Institute Guide to World Naval Weapon Systems, Fifth Edition

Long recognized as the most comprehensive reference work available on the subject, this guide remains the only complete reference to the weapons currently in service in ships, submarines, and naval aircraft around the world. It is the only book of its type to explain the transformation of the U.S. Navy into a network-centric force, a transformation that has had immense consequences for choices of tactics, weapons, services, and the systems coordinating them. This guide also offers unparalleled coverage of the weapons, sensors, and command systems of the world's navies, both those the U.S. Navy works with and those it may have to fight.

Written by one of the world's leading naval analysts, the book describes the weapons and systems in detail and examines the crucial relationship between them. Completely rewritten and newly illustrated, this edition makes a special effort to provide a clear and precise account of how weapon technology has changed to meet the new tactical and strategic challenges facing international naval forces today. Cutting-edge information is found throughout, enhanced by many new and rarely seen photographs and drawings. For example, this volume offers an unusually full account of the "system of systems" under development by the U.S. Navy and the other services to fight future limited regional wars. That initiative includes the changing role of space resources as they affect war on, over, and under the sea. This edition also benefits from the flood of material from Russia, whose weapons and systems are now owned and operated by numerous countries and are likely to be sold to many more.

The guide provides uniquely detailed coverage of weapons developed and deployed in the Far East, an area that promises to be the liveliest scene of naval action in the future. Extensive sections are devoted to explaining the intricate workings of sensors and command systems. No other book, or even set of books, offers this sort of material in such accessible form. Its detail and completeness are backed by the authority of a long-established professional expert. For the most complete and up-to-date information about weapons in every navy in the world, this is the essential resource--a work that, in effect, can serve as a textbook of modern naval technology.

Norman Friedman is a prominent defense analyst and historian specializing in the intersection between policy, strategy, and technology, mainly in a naval context. He has published more than forty books. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Commodore Dudley W. Knox medal by the Naval Historical Foundation, the Samuel Eliot Morrison award by the Naval Order of the United States, the Westminster Prize awarded by the Royal United Service Institute, and the Anderson Medal of the British Society for Nautical Research. He has twice received the John Lyman Award from the North American Society for Oceanic History. He lives in New York City.