This handbook aims to help newcomers as well as seasoned observers learn how to grapple with the problems of national defense, using insights our authors have gleaned in the course of their more than 400 years of combined experience. Each year, people are hired to address defense issues in the Pentagon, on Capitol Hill, in think tanks and throughout the media. Some of them will have experience in the armed forces; some have studied national security in universities, some have worked in the Pentagon or the defense industry. Many of them might consider a handbook for defense 'newbies' to be beneath them, but few of them will have had the depth of experience across all the disciplines represented by the authors of this book: decades in military service, intelligence, weapons design, Pentagon defense management and analysis, weapons testing, journalism, military history and congressional staff work.