North Korea armed with nuclear missiles. Iran developing nuclear weapons they can put on a variety of missiles. Troubles with Russia over the Ukraine and fears Russia might flex its muscles with missiles armed with nuclear warheads. The question many are – and should be – asking is this: What capability does the United States have to deal with this kind of existential threat.
While all the U.S. military services have a stake in ballistic missile defense the U.S. Navy is now in the lead in this important warfare area. This journey is a remarkable success story – and one not yet told. Over a period of sixty years, the U.S. Navy has evolved the most versatile, and most successful, naval air and missile defense system in the world. However, it is a journey that has been fraught with difficulty, advancing not in linear fashion, but in fits and starts, always pushing the edge of the technological envelope until it arrived where it is today.
The second decade of the 21st century ushered in a strategic shift for the United States. President Obama’s remarks to the Australian Parliament two years ago was just one speech in a constant drumbeat of United States’ officials emphasizing this rebalance to the Asia-Pacific region or, as it is often called, the United States Pivot to the Pacific. Regardless of what term is used, the emphasis on this shift has been intense. This is how then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put it in a major article in Foreign Policy:
One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will therefore be to lock in a substantially increased investment – diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise – in the Asia-Pacific region… At a time when the region is building a more mature security and economic architecture to promote stability and prosperity, U.S. commitment there is essential… Beyond our borders, people are also wondering about America’s intentions – our willingness to remain engaged and to lead. In Asia, they ask whether we are really there to stay, whether we are likely to be distracted again by events elsewhere, whether we can make – and keep – credible economic and strategic commitments, and whether we can back those commitments with action.
Read the full article regarding the United States Pivot to the Pacific on the Defense Media Network website here.
Written by George GaldorisiPosted in Blog,Book NewsMarch 31, 2014
“Thriller addicts like me devoured every Tom Clancy’s Op-Center tale. Now they are back, intricately plotted, with wonderfully evil villains and enough realistic military action and suspense to ruin a couple of night’s sleep. Highly recommended.”
— Stephen Coonts
Written by George GaldorisiPosted in Blog,Book NewsMarch 31, 2014
When people finished reading James Bradley’s bestseller, Flags of Our Fathers, they fixed the image of the six Marines raising the American Flag on Mount Suribachi in their minds and they knew what it felt like to fight and die in World War II. Now, a decade after reading that book, when people finish reading The Kissing Sailor, they will know what it felt like when World War II ended and the killing and the dying finally stopped. And they will know a great deal more.
They will know that this photo should never have happened. The three principals should have been dead. The photographer’s World War I regiment was wiped out at the Battle of Verdun. The Jewish woman’s family perished in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Hundreds of the sailor’s World War II mates drowned in Typhoon Cobra. Despite forces that plotted to kill them all, somehow they lived to cross paths in Times Square, New York, on the day World War II ended. Ordinary people, placed in extraordinary circumstances, and all three propelled by forces beyond their conscious control to that place, at that time.
See “It Started with a Kiss” here from The Villages, DAILY SUN
The National Intelligence Council (NIC) has recently released their comprehensive quadrennial report forecasting global trends that have a major impact on our world, “Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds.” In shorthand – GT2030. Global Trends 2030 helps us have an informed and well-nuanced view of the future. This is not as easy as it sounds, for, as John Maynard Keynes famously said in 1937: “The idea of the future being different from the present is so repugnant to our conventional modes of thought and behavior that we, most of us, offer a great resistance to acting on it in practice.”
NIC has been in existence for over three decades and represents the primary way the U.S. intelligence community (IC) communicates in the unclassified realm. Initially a “wholly-owned subsidiary” of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the NIC now works directly for the director of national intelligence and presents the collective research and analysis of the entire IC, an enterprise comprising 16 agencies with a combined budget of well over $60 billion. In a sentence: There is no more comprehensive analysis of future trends available anywhere, at any price. It’s not an overstatement to say this 160-page document represents the most definitive analytical look at the future security environment.
Read more about Global Trends 2030 on the Defense Media Network website here.
Written by George GaldorisiPosted in Blog,Book NewsMarch 24, 2014
From Publisher’s Weekly: Fans of the original Op-Center series created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik that ended with Jeff Rovin’s War of Eagles (2005) will welcome this solid continuation from Couch (SEAL Team One) and Galdorisi (Coronado Conspiracy). The original Op-Center, “an information clearinghouse with SWAT capabilities,” fell under the budget ax and was disbanded, but after a horrific series of bombings at four NFL stadiums, U.S. president Wyatt Midkiff decides to dust off the Op-Center file and bring the group back to life. Chase Williams, a retired four-star Navy admiral, agrees to head the new center and hunt down the terrorists responsible for the devastating attack. The trail takes the men and women of the revitalized agency into the Middle East, where they find a new plot aimed at the American homeland. This thriller procedural packs plenty of pulse-raising action. The open ending promises more to come. Agent: Mel Berger, WME. (May)
Check out the excerpt here!
Written by George GaldorisiPosted in Blog,Book NewsMarch 17, 2014
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Modern photojournalism as we know it today, has its roots in Antebellum America during the mid-1800s. Evolved in the crucible of the American Civil War, photojournalism at its best is able to do something that audio, motion pictures and video cannot: capturing moments in time and create an iconic memory for the ages. Nowhere was this more true, then during the heyday of film-based image capture in World War II. Courageous and daring combat photojournalists like Robert Capa, Joe Rosenthal and Capt. Edward Steichen risked their lives around the world to capture the iconic images that defined combat during that era for a generation of Americans. But it was a single photograph, captured on the final day of World War II, in of all places Times Square, that every American associates with VJ ( Victory Over Japan) Day: Alfred Eisenstadt’s classic The Kissing Sailor. Made world-famous by its publication in LIFE Magazine, The Kissing Sailor stood as proof to a weary America that the war was over, and peace was at hand.
View the full article here.
Written by George GaldorisiPosted in Blog,Book NewsMarch 17, 2014
This would not have been any more newsworthy than the passing of many WWII veterans every day. However, as this USA article notes.
Glenn McDuffi was considered by many to be Kissing Sailor in Alfred Eisenstaedt’s world-famous V-J Day, 1945 photograph. That was news. However, as we detail in our U.S. Naval Institute book, The Kissing Sailor, Mr. McDuffie is not the sailor in the famous Life photo. George Mendonsa is.
The kissing sailor and white dressed woman in Eisenstaedt’s V-J Day, 1945, in Times Square still walk amongst us. And while the scene they created appears so familiar to most, we know far too little. Against all the odds, and with fate’s forces at their back, two strangers traversed a triumphant world’s most popular square on the day that history’s most destructive war ended. Without rehearsal or intent, they communicated what the climax of a victorious war felt like. The particulars of that saga inspire the human spirit. Proof of their part in that iconic photo persuades the inquisitive. Treatment of their claims upsets the fair-minded. Forces well beyond their control have denied them their due far too long. Their story, most worthy of the celebrated begs telling.
The search for the kissing sailor is not our exclusive undertaking. Some of the findings fall short of breaking news. What we add to the discussion, while considerable, always existed for consideration. Well over a half-century ago a photographer and his Leica camera made plainly visible almost everything needed to make a positive identification of the kissing sailor. All one had to do is look. Really look. Not just watch.
A new Tom Clancy’s Op-Center, the first in 10 years, written by the New York Times bestselling authors of Tom Clancy’s ACT OF VALOR, with a chilling ripped-from-the-headlines scenario.
See the published praise for OOTA
Before 9/11 America was protected by a covert force known as the National Crisis Management Center. Commonly known as Op-Center, this silent, secret mantel guarded the American people and protected the country from enemies. The charter was top secret and Director Paul Hood reported directly to the president. Op-Center used undercover operatives with SWAT capabilities to diffuse crises around the world, and they were tops in their field. But after the World Trade Center disaster, in the interest of streamlining, OP-Center was disbanded—leaving the country in terrible danger.
But when terrorists detonate bombs in sports stadiums around the country leaving men, women and children dead or mutilated, the President executes an emergency order to bring back Op-Center—an Op-Center capable of dealing with the high tech crises of the 21st Century, and there is a lethal one brewing in the Middle East. A renegade Saudi Prince with ambitions of controlling the world’s oil supply has an ingenious plot to manipulate America into attacking Syria and launching a war against Iran. Next, they would ignite a sleeper cell to attack the America homeland, resulting in a bloodbath unlike any other. Only the men and women of Op-Center, using sophisticated technology, realize what is about to be unleashed. Only they have the courage to issue a warning no one wants to hear. But will anyone believe them?
Hear Chapter 1 of Out of the Ashes
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Written by George GaldorisiPosted in Blog,Book NewsJanuary 15, 2014
Additionally, Act of Valor was just awarded the Military Writers Society of America Silver Medal Award for fiction. You can read more about the making of the movie and the evolution of the book on the website.
Now that Lone Survivor recently hit the box office bringing in $38M gross. You can read the box office analysis here.
