The Naval Institute Guide to Combat Fleets of the World, 16th Edition: Their Ships, Aircraft, and Systems Hardcover – August 15, 2013

BZ to author Eric Wertheim for another outstanding Combat Fleets of the World. A bargain for all the photos and information it contains too. All navies and coast guards big and small are covered in great detail. Very well organized. IMHO, a must have for any armchair Admiral or naval enthusiast.

A very comprehensive, well organized reference book for all the world's navies. This is a treaure trove of information about the combat fleets of the world with a wide selection of photos and diagrams of individual vessels. This is a very worthwhile investment for anyone seriously interested in current naval affairs.

If you have $1000 to spend on a naval encyclopedia, pass up Combat Fleets and pick up Jane's Fighting Ships. Since 9 out of 10 of us don't have that kind of discretion, Combat Fleets is perfectly adequate. It is wonderfully comprehensive. However, that can be a vice as well as a virtue. The harbor tug gets the same photo space as the frigate. While this may occasionally be useful, the major warships would be better served with larger format photos. The clarity of the black and white photos are also not particularly good. With your average smart phone being capable of taking a high resolution picture, it's vexing to put up with dark and poorly contrasted images. Still, the line drawings are generally good and well annotated. The editing suffers occasionally, such as when information is lost at a page break. This is somewhat forgivable given the tremendous volume of information provided. It is less forgivable that both versions of the LCS receive almost mirrored editorial comment. They are very different designs and should have been treated as such. With the beautiful full color shots of Jane's, the naval magazines, as well as widespread information and photographs available online, this book is not as appealing as it once was.

This is the "value" alternative to Jane's Fighting Ships priced at about 1/3 of Jane's.As the title implies, it is a country-by-country list of navies presented in a compendium style -- ship classes have a tendency to be run-on, without much physical separation from one class to the next class -- often, photos do not appear on the same page as the class data/info, at least in the US section.Overall, it is an impressive work, which now is updated every 4-5 years. This 16th Edition may be updated 2018 or later.The Jane's series, now owned by IHS, a publicly traded for-profit company, has undergone price increases exceeding normal inflation -- the series is now published (still annually) for corporate and industry users with 2016 editions costing about $2,000 each.The original "Combat Fleets" was a French bi-annual publication, then translated to English under the editorial leadership of AD Baker (who also provided critical line drawings). My first edition is 1986/88 although there may have been a 1984 edition. Combat Fleets and Weyer's Warships (German based, although not certain if available after 2013/15 edition) remain the affordable "consumer" versions.

The world's greatest reference of naval power. I have owned every one since 1979. This is Tom Clancy's greatest reference book for his books. This book is an absolute must have for anyone wanting to know everything about current worldwide naval forces.

The best and most reasonably priced modern naval reference book ever. You won't regret buying this book.

It is very comprehensive. Covers all areas of my interests of ships and naval aircraft. If there were 6 stars I would give this.

Too many errors to recommend spending this much money. Disparity on the amount of technical information presented from one ship/country to the next. The pictures are good and the best you could ask for the price. With that I give this a solid 3/5 stars but would recommend spending more for Janes or simply looking around open sources to find specifics on whatever ship you want.