Founded in 1873, the U. S. Naval Institute is a non-profit, professional military association of more than 50,000 members.  An independent, nonpartisan forum on global security issues, it creates books, magazines, blogs and conferences – and maintains expansive historical archives.  The Institute educates on the need for a strong national defense; on the enduring role of the maritime services in preserving it and on our national obligation to the men and women of the all-volunteer force who provide it.

The Institute’s origins date to October 9, 1873, when 15 Naval Officers gathered at the U. S. Naval Academy’s Department of Physics and Chemistry building in Annapolis, Maryland for lively discussion of military history and strategy.  Published since 1874, Proceedings magazine is the Institute’s influential flagship publication.  Fiercely independent, the monthly journal offers convention-challenging thought on the state of U. S. defense – particularly issues affecting the Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard.  It is America’s fourth-oldest continuously published magazine. 

USNI also publishes the bi-monthly Naval History, highlighting the role of sea power in U. S. national development.  The Institute’s publishing arm – the Naval Institute Press – is famous for releasing such best-sellers as The Hunt for Red October and Flight of the Intruder; it publishes 80 new scholarly and popular titles each year – on all aspects of defense, intelligence and homeland security.

USNI conducts annual conferences in Washington, D.C.; San Diego, California; Norfolk, Virginia and elsewhere around the U. S., creating venues in which senior government officials, Members of Congress, military leaders, and prominent thinkers consider major defense issues in pursuit of solutions. 

The Naval Institute Blog is a venue for thoughtful, vigorous debate on naval and security policy.  The Institute’s multi-media offerings include Americans at War, a series of poignant video vignettes in which veterans of conflicts dating to World War I recall the experience of combat.  Americans at War is the platform on which these brave souls share with us, in their own words, a snippet of what it was like for them during war and the myriad of emotions they experienced, from fear to guilt to pride. 

As part of the Naval Institute’s acclaimed effort to conserve naval heritage, it conducts a robust oral history program – documenting recollections of the Nation’s most senior military leaders – and maintains the world’s largest private collection of more than 450,000 vintage military photographs.