AFJ marked 150 years of publication in August 2013.
With this issue, we celebrate 150 years of continuous publication of Armed Forces Journal and lay out the path ahead.
It is fair to say that the military enterprise has seen more change since the Army and Navy Journal first published on Aug. 29, 1863, than in the millennia that preceded it. Sail gave way to steam, horses to internal combustion, semaphore to satellites. Along the way, our publication changed itself — and also helped usher in change for the U.S. military. We published seminal articles on marksmanship training after the Civil War, promoted national-preparedness movements between the world wars, sounded the alarm about plummeting morale during the Vietnam War, pressed for an expansion of special operations capabilities in the 1970s and ’80s, challenged conventional thinking and top leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan in the post-9/11 era, and more.
AFJ’s evolution reflected the changing course of the military throughout. In the 1920s, we added a subhead (“The Gazette of the Land, Sea, and Air”) to recognize a new dimension in warfare. In the 1960s, we shifted from a weekly bulletin to a monthly magazine. In the past decade, AFJ evolved to be a journal of debate and opinion across the joint forces, rededicated to its founder’s commitment to improve the military in ways large and small.
This 150th anniversary issue, for example, features a science and technology vision from the Air Force’s chief scientist (“Global Horizons”), a new way of looking at combat fitness (“Women and the Audie Murphy Model”) and a provocative prescription for what ails the Army (“Purge the Generals”).
But it also marks the end of one epoch and the beginning of the next.
To keep AFJ thriving, we must thrust its conversations more fully into the new town square: the increasingly mobile online world.
Beginning immediately, AFJ leaves its print roots behind and begins life anew on a brand-new website, optimized for tablet and accessible anywhere. Registration is free and easy, and inside you’ll find the same streamlined and substantive articles, along with a wealth of new content, in new and more convenient forms.
Going all-digital means we can deliver more content, more frequently, more easily. So you can look forward to twice as many issues, daily updates and advisories, and weekly e-newsletters.
We’re excited about our digital future. So keep your articles and letters coming, and let us know how we can better serve you … for our next century and a half.
Bradley Peniston
Editor
bradp@armedforcesjournal.com
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