COULSDON, England -- If Iraqi President Saddam Hussein wanted to know more about what was devastating Baghdad during the gulf war, he didn't need to call in his spies.
All he had to do was check his Jane's publications, which would have told him about everything from stealth bombers to cruise missiles.
Here at the main headquarters of Jane's Information Group, some of the world's top weapons watchers and aviation aficionados produce yearbooks and magazines that no military planner, spy chief or airline executive can do without.
Jane's churns out more than 300 publications and pamphlets annually, covering armies to railroads, airplanes to radar. This year, the company is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its signature yearbook, Jane's Fighting Ships.
Its other classic is Jane's All the World's Aircraft, a dense compilation of the latest, greatest and sometimes scariest in military and civilian hardware.
And for those who need their military fix quickly, there's Jane's Defence Weekly, the glossy magazine that tracks everything from arms deals in the Middle East to personnel shake-ups in the Chinese army.
CBS News' "60 Minutes" once dubbed Jane's the "closest thing to a commercial intelligence agency."
That may have been an understatement.
Jane's is noted for its military scoops, publishing photos and details of once-secret jets, helicopters and nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. Arms negotiators have consulted Jane's yearbooks -- and then cut deals. Jane's manual on land mines was used by U.S. soldiers as they deployed in Bosnia.
And, of course, an entire generation of techno-thriller novelists and military journalists has used Jane's publications and experts to keep pace with the latest trends in war-making equipment.
Among Jane's customers are the International Red Cross and the Central Intelligence Agency. Hussein was a subscriber to Jane's Defence Weekly until his subscription ended when Iraq was cut off from the rest of the world by United Nations-imposed sanctions.
"I don't know of any other information organization that has the stature of Jane's," says Eugene Carroll, a retired U.S. Navy admiral who is deputy director of the Center for Defense Information in Washington.
"They were given access to an awful lot of official data coming out of the ministries of nations all around the world," he adds. "The Pentagon cooperated with them, provided an awful lot of material. They are the unique authority on matters military."
Detail, detail
The company has built its reputation on being a stickler for details and sticking to the facts. Jane's doesn't publish classified information. It relies instead on what is known as "open-source material," gathered from public documents, and interviews with military hardware designers.
"Yes, we are an insider, but we protect our impartiality with our accuracy and our authority," says Alfred Rolington, the company's managing director. "If we didn't have that independence, then, frankly, no one would buy from us. Over the years, we've been accused of being communists and of being capitalist swine."
The company founder would probably have appreciated the backhanded compliment.
Fred T. Jane, born in 1865, was a vicar's son who enjoyed practical jokes, homemade explosives and all things nautical. As a child playing war games, Jane devised signaling and identification methods that were later used by Britain's Royal Navy. In 1882, inspired by a British naval bombardment of Alexandria, Egypt, he created a portfolio of drawings that would later form the backbone of the first edition of Jane's Fighting Ships.
"Jane can be expected to go a long way -- in one direction or another," one of his teachers reported.
Jane was an illustrator, journalist, writer of cheap science fiction and adventure novels.
He was also a superpatriot who feared Britain was being infiltrated by spies prior to World War I.
He once "arrested" a German he suspected was a spy. When the story hit the newspapers, the public provided Jane with tales of other alleged spies. He gave the information to the government, which used it as the foundation of a counterespionage operation that led to the creation of the MI5 security service.
In 1898, he published his opus, Jane's All the World's Fighting Ships. He followed that up in 1909, producing Jane's Airships (Aeroplanes and Dirigibles), a brief account of the brave, new world of air transport.
Jane died during a flu epidemic in 1916. But his yearbooks survived and even thrived as the world arms race accelerated in a war-filled century.
Gulf war fame
For decades, Jane's was known only to military insiders, specialists and journalists.
But during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, Jane's struck it big, as the world's media struggled to comprehend the high-tech war-making wizardry unleashed by the U.S. military.
Paul Beaver, an exuberant Englishman and company spokesman, emerged as the company's global star, calmly discussing the merits and perils of Scud missiles and Apache helicopters.
