The Hand Behind Unmanned: Origins of the US Autonomous Military Arsenal (Bridging the Gap)

The Hand Behind Unmanned tells the fascinating story of the people, processes, and beliefs that led to the contemporary American unmanned arsenal.It takes an expansive look at automated and autonomous technologies, from mines and torpedoes, to guided bombs and missiles, satellites, and ultimately drones.Instead of asking the question: "why unmanned rather than manned," the book explains why certain types of unmanned systems became popular while others languished in research or in small pockets of the American military. In order to answer this question, Jacquelyn Schneider and Julia Macdonald use interviews of senior decisionmakers, military doctrine and writings, and historical sources to detail the proliferation of over a hundred years of unmanned weapons in the US arsenal, from mines and balloons to Reapers and Global Hawks.Their exploration reveals how multiple factors--key policy entrepreneurs, like Andy Marshall in the Office of Net Assessment; critical junctures like the fall of