TY - BOOK AU - Van Creveld,Martin TI - Command in war SN - 0674144406 AV - UB212 V11 PY - 1985/// CY - Cambridge, Mass. PB - Harvard University Press KW - Command and control systems KW - History KW - Command of troops KW - Commandement militaire KW - Histoire KW - Commandement des troupes KW - fast KW - F�uhrung KW - gnd KW - Geschichte KW - Milit�ar KW - Oorlogvoering KW - gtt KW - Bevelvoering KW - nli KW - Military operations KW - Command & control N1 - Includes bibliographical references (pages 320-332) and index; Introduction : on command -- The stone age of command -- The revolution in strategy -- Railroads, rifles, and wires -- The timetable war -- Masters of mobile warfare -- The helicopter and the computer -- Conclusion : reflections on command; ACLS e-books permit unlimited multi-user access N2 - Many books have been written about strategy, tactics, and great commanders. This is the first book to deal exclusively with the nature of command itself, and to trace its development over two thousand years from ancient Greece to Vietnam. It treats historically the whole variety of problems involved in commanding armies, including staff organization and administration, communications methods and technologies, weaponry, and logistics. And it analyzes the relationship between these problems and military strategy. In vivid descriptions of key battles and campaigns--among others, Napoleon at Jena, Moltke's K�oniggr�atz campaign, the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, and the Americans in Vietnam--van Creveld focuses on the means of command and shows how those means worked in practice. He finds that technological advances such as the railroad, breech-loading rifles, the telegraph and later the radio, tanks, and helicopters all brought commanders not only new tactical possibilities but also new limitations. Although vast changes have occurred in military thinking and technology, the one constant has been an endless search for certainty--certainty about the state and intentions of the enemy's forces; certainty about the manifold factors that together constitute the environment in which war is fought, from the weather and terrain to radioactivity and the presence of chemical warfare agents; and certainty about the state, intentions, and activities of one's own forces. The book concludes that progress in command has usually been achieved less by employing more advanced technologies than by finding ways to transcend the limitations of existing ones. -- Publisher's description UR - http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.32009 UR - http://library.ncl.ac.uk/openurl/?u.ignore_date_coverage=true&rft.mms_id=9912345831702411 UR - https://liverpool.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.32009 UR - http://libanswers.liverpool.ac.uk/faq/182315 UR - https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb.32009 ER -