This publication considers the lessons to be gained for Britain, the British armed forces, and for NATO as a whole, from the Yugoslav wars of dissolution (1991-1999), with particular emphasis on the Kosovo crisis. The papers come from a diverse and high quality mixture of analysts, practitioners and policy-makers. The issues developed here represent a significant advance in the emerging debate on the lessons to be learnt from the Balkan experience, which will shape thinking on defence and international security far into the new millennium.

A fascinating new insight into the Falklands Conflict, covering every aspect of its origins and the political and diplomatic response to the Argentinean action as well as illuminating accounts of the military action to retake the islands, at every level of command. In June 2002, exactly twenty years after the cessation of hostilities between Britain and Argentina, many of the key participants came together at a major international conference. This conference, held at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst and organized jointly by RMA Sandhurst and her sister institution Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, aimed to re-examine the events of spring 1982 from the perspective that only twenty intervening years can bring. The Conference mixed those who had participated in the events of spring and early summer 1982, diplomats, politicians, civil servants, soldiers, sailors and airmen, with historians, political scientists and journalists. These accounts and interpretations of the conflict shed new light on one of the most interesting and controversial episodes in recent British history.

There is a saying—now a military cliché—attributed to several senior army and navy commanders of the mid-20th century, that amateurs or juniors discuss tactics, while their seniors and other professionals discuss logistics; a saying that has been qualified in recent decades by the view that the most senior and professional decisions of all are concerned with force generation, the creation of the formations needed for a possible future war. Logistics, together with force generation, was very obviously of critical importance to the British recovery of the Falkland Islands in April-June 1982. Port Stanley, the Falklands’ capital and only town, is considerably further from London than Tokyo is. The British won chiefly because of their ability, in an improvised military campaign for which they had no prior planning, to project and sustain a Task Force consisting of a Carrier Task Group and an Amphibious Task Group across a distance of over 12,000 kilometres. A vital role was played by the small British territory of Ascension Island in the South Atlantic, just over half way to the Falklands. A lesser but still important role was played by the British recovery early in the campaign of the island of South Georgia, which in 1982 was part of the Falkland Islands Dependencies, and is about 1,500 kilometres east of East Falkland. However, the lack of a secure harbour or port facility of any size on either Ascension Island or South Georgia imposed a severe time limit on how long the British warships could remain in the South Atlantic before they would need to leave the area for essential maintenance.

Operation Overlord was the largest amphibious military operation ever launched, with a vast armada transporting over 150,000 Allied soldiers across the Channel. Just after dawn on 6 June 1944, the Allied troops assaulted the beaches of the Cotentin peninsula against stiff German resistance. Coordinated with the amphibious landings were a number of aerial assaults that carried out crucial missions to take key areas, enable the vital link up between the beaches. Casualties during the invasion were horrendous, but the assaults were successful. This book looks in detail at the plans and build-up to the operation, and discusses the events of D-Day in each of the key areas of the operation.

This key title in the acclaimed Battle Zone Normandy series explores the US attack on Omaha Beach at dawn on D-Day 1944 and its aftermath. At dawn on D-Day the US Army's most experienced, battle-tested infantry formation, 1st Division or 'The Big Red One' launched its attack on Omaha Beach. The assault wave was launched too far out to sea and the men suffered terribly from seasickness. All the amphibious tanks sank except two, depriving the infantry of armoured support against minefields, bunkers and other defences. Moreover, the Allied aircraft tasked with destroying the fortifications had dropped their loads on open country too far inland and the offshore bombardment was hampered by poor visibility. Of the first six landing craft, two sank while the remainder ran aground on a sandbank. The assaulting infantry were compelled to wade in shoulder-high water, many drowning or being shot as they struggled ashore. All cohesion was lost and following waves of infantry simply stumbled into the carnage on the beach, the piles of wreckage restricting movement. In these first harrowing hours of the invasion, Lieutenant-General Omar Bradley considered aborting the Omaha effort altogether. Despite these appalling difficulties, a vulnerable bridgehead some 1.5 km inland had been established by the evening of 6 June 1944.

D-Day, 6 June 1944, saw the largest amphibious landing operation in history. From ports and harbours on the southern coast of England, an armada of troopships and landing craft launched the Allied return to mainland Europe. Stephen Badsey provides a concise account of the Normandy campaign, from the fiercely contested landings, to the struggle to capture Caen, the 'Cobra' offensive and the dramatic pursuit of the Germans to the River Seine. This was the crucial campaign of the Western theatre: after the Battle of Normandy the only question was how soon the war would end, not who would win it.

The Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870 when Bismarck engineered a war with the French Second Empire under Napoleon III. This was part of his wider political strategy of uniting Prussia with the southern German states, excluding Austria. The war was an overwhelming Prussian victory, and King Wilhelm I was proclaimed Emperor of the new united Germany. The Second Empire collapsed and Napoleon III became an exile in Britain. In the peace settlement with the French Third Republic in 1871 Germany gained the eastern French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, areas that were to provide a bone of contention for years to come.

A fascinating new insight into the Falklands Conflict, covering every aspect of its origins and the political and diplomatic response to the Argentinean action as well as illuminating accounts of the military action to retake the islands, at every level of command. In June 2002, exactly twenty years after the cessation of hostilities between Britain and Argentina, many of the key participants came together at a major international conference. This conference, held at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst and organized jointly by RMA Sandhurst and her sister institution Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, aimed to re-examine the events of spring 1982 from the perspective that only twenty intervening years can bring. The Conference mixed those who had participated in the events of spring and early summer 1982, diplomats, politicians, civil servants, soldiers, sailors and airmen, with historians, political scientists and journalists. These accounts and interpretations of the conflict shed new light on one of the most interesting and controversial episodes in recent British history.

Great Britain was with its Empire the most powerful of the major belligerents, the most politically and socially stable, and the best able to endure the strains of the war. Its great naval, financial and diplomatic strengths were critical to the Allied victory. Its unprecedented creation of a mass army was a major strain, and victory required progressive government involvement in economic and social matters. The immediate effect of the war was to slightly flatten the country’s social structure, but other effects are disputed. In political and military terms Great Britain was a substantial winner from the war, and except in relation to the United States it emerged stronger than before.

A prevalent view among historians is that both horsed cavalry and the cavalry charge became obviously obsolete in the second half of the nineteenth century in the face of increased infantry and artillery firepower, and that officers of the cavalry clung to both for reasons of prestige and stupidity. It is this view, commonly held but rarely supported by sustained research, that this book challenges. It shows that the achievements of British and Empire cavalry in the First World War, although controversial, are sufficient to contradict the argument that belief in the cavalry was evidence of military incompetence. It offers a case study of how in reality a practical military doctrine for the cavalry was developed and modified over several decades, influenced by wider defence plans and spending, by the experience of combat, by Army politics, and by the rivalries of senior officers. Debate as to how the cavalry was to adjust its tactics in the face of increased infantry and artillery firepower began in the mid nineteenth century, when the increasing size of armies meant a greater need for mobile troops. The cavalry problem was how to deal with a gap in the evolution of warfare between the mass armies of the later nineteenth century and the motorised firepower of the mid twentieth century, an issue that is closely connected with the origins of the deadlock on the Western Front. Tracing this debate, this book shows how, despite serious attempts to ‘learn from history’, both European-style wars and colonial wars produced ambiguous or disputed evidence as to the future of cavalry, and doctrine was largely a matter of what appeared practical at the time. Contents: Preface; Doctrine and the cavalry 1880–1918; The Wolseley era 1880–1899; The Boer War 1899–1902; The Roberts era 1902–1905; The Haldane era 1905–1914; The First World War 1914–1918; Conclusion; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.