The Command Book

Perhaps the best single way to summarize it is to view the book as a bureaucratic or organizational history. What the author does is to take three distinct historical themes-organization, technology, and ideology and examine how each contributed to the development of WWMCCS and its ability (and frequent inability) to satisfy the demands of national leadership. Whereas earlier works were primarily descriptive, cataloguing the command and control assets then in place or under development, The book offers more analysis by focusing on the issue of how and why WWMCCS developed the way it did. While at first glance less provocative, this approach is potentially more useful for defense decision makers dealing with complex human and technological systems in the post-cold-war era. It also makes for a better story and, I trust, a more interesting read. By necessity, this work is selective. The elements of WWMCCS are so numerous, and the parameters of the system potentially so expansive, that a full treatment is impossible within the compass of a single volume. Indeed, a full treatment of even a single WWMCCS asset or subsystem-the Defense Satellite Communications System, Extremely Low Frequency Communications, the National Military Command System, to name but a few-could itself constitute a substantial work. In its broadest conceptualization, WWMCCS is the world, and my approach has been to deal with the head of the octopus rather than its myriad tentacles.