Illustrator: Felipe Rodríguez. — Osprey Publishing, 2019. — 48 p. Since the Gulf War, the Abrams tank has undergone a transformation, while fighting in conflicts across the world. Its M1A1 and M1A2 variants have seen great improvements made to this iconic tank, including in fire-control, armour protection, and thermal imaging technology. Involvement in the conflicts in Iraq and...
Illustrator: Peter Dennis. — Osprey Publishing, 2018. — 48 p. Over the last 30 years, the ‘technical' or armed pick-up truck has become arguably the most ubiquitous military land vehicle of modern warfare. Harking back to the armed Jeeps and Chevrolet trucks of the SAS and Long Range Desert Group in North Africa in World War II, the world's first insurgent technicals were those of...
Illustrator: Paul Wright. — Osprey Publishing, 2018. — 48 p. The Italian Royal Navy (Regia Marina) operated one of largest cruiser forces of World War II. As a signatory to the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, the Regia Marina immediately attempted to reinforce its treaty-limited battleship force by building seven large 10,000-ton heavy cruisers. Italian light cruisers also possessed...
Illustrator: Paul Wright. — Osprey Publishing, 2019. — 48 p. On September 1, 1910, France became the last great naval power to lay down a dreadnought battleship, the Courbet. The ensuing Courbet and Bretagne-class dreadnoughts had a relatively quiet World War I, spending most of it at anchor off the entrance to the Adriatic, keeping watch over the Austro-Hungarian fleet. The...
Illustrator: Henry Morshead, Johnny Shumate. — Osprey Publishing, 2017. — 48 p. The M113 is the most widely used and versatile armoured vehicle in the world. Fielded in 1960 as a simple 'battlefield taxi', over 80,000 M113s would see service with 50 nations around the world and 55 years later, many thousands are still in use. In addition to its original role of transporting troops...
Illustrator: Felipe Rodríguez. — Osprey Publishing, 2018. — 48 p. In the wake of the T-72 tank's poor performance in the 1991 Gulf War, the Kremlin instructed the Russian tank industry to drop the discredited T-72 designation in favour of the T-90 Vladimir. The T-90 was in fact a further evolution of the T-72 family, but the name change represented an important break in...
Illustrator: Paul Wright. — Osprey Publishing, 2017. — 48 p. Heavily armed and formidable, guided missile cruisers formed the core of the Soviet Navy during the Cold War. From the last class of conventional Sverdlov-class cruisers through to increasingly complex and formidable missile cruisers, these ships ensured that NATO took the Soviet naval threat seriously. Soviet Cold...
Illustrator: Julian Baker, Johnny Shumate. — Osprey Publishing, 2018. — 48 p. Four pipes and flush decks - these ships were a distinctively American destroyer design. Devised immediately prior to and during the United States' involvement in World War I they dominated the US Navy's destroyer forces all the way through to World War II. They were deployed on North Atlantic and...
Illustrator: Paul Wright, Felipe Rodríguez, Alan Gilliland. — Osprey Publishing, 2019. — 48 p. The first true US battleships began with the experimental Maine and Texas, followed by the three-ship Indiana class, and the Iowa class, which incorporated lessons from the previous ships. These initial ships set the enduring US battleship standard of being heavily armed and armoured...
Illustrator: Paul Wright. — Osprey Publishing, 2017. — 48 p. While not as famous as their larger and faster sister ships such as the Essex- and Yorktown-class carriers, escort carriers made an enormous contribution towards Allied victory both in the Pacific and Atlantic theatres. Rather than relying on size or speed, it was their sheer numbers that made them so effective. Indeed,...
Illustrator: Peter Bull. — Osprey Publishing, 2018. — 48 p. The tiny new state of the United Provinces of the Netherlands won its independence from the mighty Spanish empire by fighting and winning the Eighty Years' War, from 1568 and 1648. In this long conflict, warfare on water played a much bigger role in determining the ultimate victor. On the high seas the fleet carved out a...
Illustrator: Julian Baker, Johnny Shumate. — Osprey Publishing, 2018. — 48 p. In 1908 the most incredible naval arms race in history began. Flush with cash from rubber and coffee, Brazil decided to order three of the latest, greatest category of warship available - the dreadnought battleship. One Brazilian dreadnought by itself could defeat the combined gunnery of every other...
Illustrator: Paul Wright. — Osprey Publishing, 2019. — 48 p. From Spain to Russia, and from Ottoman Turkey to Bismarck's Prussia, this book explores 15 years that transformed European naval warfare. When the Gloire slid down the Toulon slipway in 1859, it changed sea power forever. With this ship, the world's first oceangoing ironclad, France had a warship that could sink any...
Illustrator: Paul Wright. — Osprey Publishing, 2018. — 48 p. In November 1859, the French warship La Gloire was launched. She was the world's first seagoing ironclad - a warship built from wood, but whose hull was clad in a protective layer of iron plate. Britain, not to be outdone, launched her own ironclad the following year - HMS Warrior - which, when she entered service,...
Illustrator: Adam Tooby.— Osprey Publishing, 2020. — 48 p. Faced with an increasingly formidable anti-ship cruise missile threat from the Soviet Union in the early days of the Cold War, and with the recent memory of the kamikaze threat from World War II, the USN placed a great priority on developing air defence cruise missiles and getting them to sea to protect the fleet. The...
Illustrator: Adam Hook. — Osprey Publishing, 2020. — 48 p. Elite forces need elite vehicles. As Vladimir Putin has devoted effort and funds into modernising Russia's armed forces and turning them into an instrument geared not just for defending the Motherland but also projecting power beyond its borders, Russia has seen a growing emphasis on special and specialist forces....
Illustrator: Giuseppe Rava. — Osprey Publishing, 2017. — 48 p. The period of relative peace enjoyed by the Roman Empire in its first two centuries ended with the Marcomannic Wars. The following centuries saw near-constant warfare, which brought new challenges for the Roman Navy. It was now not just patrolling the Mediterranean but also fighting against invaders with real naval...
Illustrator: Tony Bryan. — Osprey Publishing, 2017. — 48 p. As the possibility of war loomed in the 1930s, the British Admiralty looked to update their fleet of destroyers to compete with the new ships being built by Germany and Japan, resulting in the commissioning of the powerful Tribal-class. These were followed by the designing of the first of several slightly smaller ships,...
Illustrator: Felipe Rodríguez. — Osprey Publishing, 2018. — 48 p. The first American armoured cars began to emerge around the turn of the century, seeing their first military use in 1916 during the Punitive Expedition against Pancho Villa. When the United States entered World War I, the American Expeditionary Forces used some armoured cars in France, and American armoured cars...
Illustrator: Adam Tooby. — Osprey Publishing, 2018. — 48 p. The Soviet Union's cruise missile submarines from the modified Whiskey, to the Oscar II classes were among the most formidable vessels of the Cold War. They were initially designed to carry land attack nuclear-tipped cruise missiles designed to strike targets on the eastern coast of the United States. By the late 1960s,...
Illustrator: Felipe Rodríguez. — Osprey Publishing, 2019. — 48 p. The SU-76 assault gun was the second most widely manufactured Soviet armoured fighting vehicle of World War II, out-numbered only by the legendary T-34. Inspired in part by the German Marder series of tank destroyers, Soviet designers realized that the chassis of the obsolete T-70 light tank could be adapted to a...
Illustrator: Henry Morshead. — Osprey Publishing, 2018. — 48 p. The first Italian armoured cars were used in the war in Libya in 1911-12 against the Ottoman Empire. With few tanks being developed, the Italians relied instead on the development of more mobile armoured cars like the Ansaldo Lancia 1 Z, during World War I, but post-war the army, focusing on the Alpine battlegrounds...
Illustrator: Henry Morshead. — Osprey Publishing, 2019. — 48 p. French experience with armour in Indo-China dated back to 1919, when it sent FT-17s to the colony, followed by a variety of armoured cars. After World War II, French troops were equipped with a motley collection of American and cast-off British equipment until the outbreak of war in Korea saw an increase in military...
Illustrator: Paul Wright. — Osprey Publishing, 2020. — 48 p. During the American War of Independence (1775-83), Congress issued almost 800 letters of marque, as a way of combating Britain's overwhelming naval and mercantile superiority. At first, it was only fishermen and the skippers of small merchant ships who turned to privateering, with mixed results. Eventually though,...
Illustrator: Paul Wright. Osprey Publishing, 2020. — 48 p. In the late 19th and early 20th century, a combination of coastal defence for the homeland and fleet defence for the East Indies became the established naval strategy for the Royal Dutch Navy and set the template for the world wars. Battleships were too expensive to build and maintain, so after World War I, there was...
Illustrator: Paul Wright. — Osprey Publishing, 2021. — 48 p. The Italian Royal Navy (Regia Marine or RM) began the Second World War with one of the largest fleets in the world. Included in this was a total of 59 fleet destroyers, and others were added during the war. These were a diverse collection of ships dating back to the First World War, large destroyers built to counter...
Illustrator: Rodríguez Felipe — Osprey Publishing, 2021. — 48 p. The crossing of the river Rhine marked the beginning of the end of the Third Reich, but the Wehrmacht would fight ferociously on its home soil until the fall of Berlin. The Battle of Germany saw the most advanced tanks of the Allies pitted against the remnants of the once-formidable Panzerwaffe, now exhausted and...
Illustrator: Giuseppe Rava. — Osprey Publishing, 2016. — 48 p. The Roman Empire was not only built by the strength of the legions but also by a navy that was the most powerful maritime force ever to have existed. It was the presence of this fleet that secured the trade routes and maintained the communications within the huge Empire. The superior design of their warships, coupled...
Illustrator: Donato Spedaliere. — Osprey Publishing, 2017. — 48 p. The Maginot Line was one of the most advanced networks of fortifications in history. Built in the aftermath of World War I, and stretching along the French eastern border from Belgium to Switzerland, it was designed to prevent German troops from ever setting foot on French soil again. Its primary defensive weapons...
Illustrator: Wright Paul — Osprey Publishing, 2021. — 48 p. Though they were never the most glamorous of warships, found US Navy frigates were frequently found on the frontlines of the Cold War at sea. These warships were the descendants of World War II's destroyer escorts, designed primarily to escort convoys. They specialized in anti-submarine warfare, but were intended to be...
Illustrator: Wright Paul — Osprey Publishing, 2022. — 48 p. In recent years the phrase 'gunboat diplomacy' has been used to describe the crude use of naval power to bully or coerce a weaker nation. During the reign of Queen Victoria, 'gunboat diplomacy' was viewed very differently. It was the use of a very limited naval force to encourage global stability and to protect British...
Illustrator: Paul Wright. — Osprey Publishing, 2017. — 48 p. In 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) went to war with a marginal anti-submarine warfare (ASW) capability. This was a lamentable state of affairs for a nation dependent upon imports to sustain its war economy. There were only a few purpose-built ASW escorts available at the start of the war and these were augmented...
Illustrator: Steve Noon. — Osprey Publishing, 2017. — 48 p. World War I was the Golden Age of the railway gun. Even though at the start of the conflict none of the armies possessed any railway artillery pieces and the very idea was comparatively new, more railway guns were used during this war than in any other conflict. Designed to break the stalemate of trench warfare, the first...
Illustrator: Paul Wright. — Osprey Publishing, 2019. — 48 p. In 1941, as the Battle of the Atlantic raged and ship losses mounted, the British Admiralty desperately tried to find ways to defeat the U-Boat threat to Britain's maritime lifeline. Facing a shortage of traditional aircraft carriers and shore-based aircraft, the Royal Navy, as a stopgap measure, converted merchant ships...
Illustrator: Adam Tooby. — Osprey Publishing, 2020. — 48 p. In this highly detailed book, naval historian Edward Hampshire reveals the fascinating history of the nuclear-powered attack submarines built and operated by the Soviet Union in the Cold War, including each class of these formidable craft as they developed throughout the Cold War period. The November class, which were...
Illustrator: Felipe Rodríguez. — Osprey Publishing, 2023. — 48 p. An illustrated study of the big guns of Hitler's army – the Wehrmacht's field artillery, its capabilities and its role in German fighting units of World War II. Often overshadowed in military history by the tanks and aircraft of Blitzkrieg, Germany's artillery was key to its methods of waging war throughout World...
Illustrator: Adam Tooby. — Osprey Publishing, 2019. — 48 p. Amphibious assault ships have been at the centre of nearly all of Britain's expeditionary campaigns since World War II, from the Suez crisis of 1956 to operations as far afield as Borneo (1963-66), the Falklands (1982), Sierra Leone (2000) and Iraq (2003). In major operations such as Suez and the Falklands, the use of...
Illustrator: Andrea Ricciardi Gaudesi, Adam Tooby— Osprey Publishing, 2020. — 48 p. As the outbreak of World War II approached, Nazi Germany ordered artillery manufacturers Krupp and Rheimetall-Borsig to build several super-heavy siege guns, vital to smash through French and Belgian fortresses that stood in the way of the Blitzkrieg. These 'secret weapons' were much larger than...
Illustrator: Felipe Rodríguez.— Osprey Publishing, 2020. — 48 p. The Battle of the Bulge raises many questions which, until now, have not been adequately answered: How did the major tank types perform during the battle? What were the specific ‘lessons learned' from the combat? And did these lessons result in changes to tanks in the subsequent months? Offering detailed answers...
Illustrator: Adam Tooby, Irene Cano Rodríguez. — Osprey Publishing, 2020. — 48 p. The Destroyer Escort was the smallest ocean-going escort built for the United States Navy - a downsized destroyer with less speed, fewer guns, and fewer torpedoes than its big brother, the fleet destroyer. Destroyer escorts first went into production because the Royal Navy needed an escort...
Illustrator: Rodríguez Felipe — Osprey Publishing, 2021. — 48 p. The German tank forces in Normandy in June-August 1944 had the advantage of fighting on the defensive side, as well as comprising of some of the most powerful and advanced tanks used by any side in the war. Yet success in tank warfare depends on many things beyond technological superiority. This book describes the...
Illustrator: Wright Paul. — Osprey Publishing, 2021. — 48 p. In July 1936, a pro-fascist coup orchestrated by General Franco tore Spain apart and plunged the country into a bitter civil war. Like Spain itself, the Spanish Navy was torn in two: crews and most ships remained loyal to the Republican government but many of the Navy's officers joined Franco's rebels, and warships...
Illustrator: Jim Laurier. — Osprey Publishing, 1998. — 48 p. Following in the best traditions of German ingenuity in design and construction of armoured vehicles, the SdKfz 251 firmly realised the concept of a competent cross-country tactical vehicle for armoured infantry units. So successful was this half-track that not only did a modified version of it remain in use with Czech...
Illustrator: Jim Laurier. — Osprey Publishing, 2019. — 48 p. Although not as well-known as the V-1 buzz bomb and the V-2 missile, the first German missiles to see combat were anti-ship missiles, the Henschel Hs.293 guided missile and the Fritz-X guided bomb. These began to see extensive combat in the Mediterranean in 1943. In their most famous use, the Italian battleship Roma was...
Illustrator: Paul Wright— Osprey Publishing, 2021. — 48 p. The term 'pre-dreadnought' was applied in retrospect, to describe the capital ships built during the decade and a half before the launch of HMS Dreadnought in 1906. At that moment these once great warships were rendered obsolete. However, until then, they were simply called 'battleships' and were unquestionably the most...
Illustrator: Wright Paul — Osprey Publishing, 2022. — 48 p. Before the start of World War II, the battleship was still king, and all the major powers were designing even mightier battleships to surpass their most modern and powerful classes. But when war broke out, aircraft carriers would dominate naval warfare, and none of these monster warships would ever be completed. In...
Illustrator: Rodríguez Felipe — Osprey Publishing, 2023. — 48 p. Few modern missile systems have had such significance as the S-300 family. Highly regarded technically, Russia's most powerful air-defense systems have been a major strategic asset to the country, exported to major powers around the world, and are a key weapon in many international hotspots and in recent wars. In...
Illustrator: Rodríguez Felipe — Osprey Publishing, 2021. — 48 p. Allied success in invading Fortress Europe (the area of Continental Europe occupied by Nazi Germany) depended on getting armor onto the beaches as fast as possible. This book explains how the Allies developed the specialist tanks it needed, their qualities, deployment and numbers, and how they performed on the two...
Illustrator: Rodríguez Irene Cano — Osprey Publishing, 2021. — 48 p. One of the most remarkable mechanized campaigns of recent years pitted the brutal and heavily armed jihadis of Islamic State against an improvised force belonging to the Kurdish YPG (later the SDF). While some Kurdish vehicles were originally from Syrian Army stocks or captured from ISIS, many others were...
Illustrator: Tooby Adam — Osprey Publishing, 2024. — 48 p. The finest American destroyers of World War II had surprisingly long careers into the Cold War and the missile age. The 175-strong Fletcher-class was the largest class of US Navy destroyers ever built, and most received some modernization after World War II. A handful were converted into ASW (Anti-Submarine Warfare)...