1.
War
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War is a state of armed conflict between societies. It is generally characterized by extreme aggression, destruction, and mortality, an absence of war is usually called peace. Warfare refers to the activities and characteristics of types of war. Total war is warfare that is not restricted to legitimate military targets. While some scholars see war as a universal and ancestral aspect of human nature, as concerns a belligerents losses in proportion to its prewar population, the most destructive war in modern history may have been the Paraguayan War. In 2013 war resulted in 31,000 deaths, down from 72,000 deaths in 1990, in 2003, Richard Smalley identified war as the sixth biggest problem facing humanity for the next fifty years. Another byproduct of some wars is the prevalence of propaganda by some or all parties in the conflict, the word is related to the Old Saxon werran, Old High German werran, and the German verwirren, meaning “to confuse”, “to perplex”, and “to bring into confusion”. In German, the equivalent is Krieg, the Spanish, Portuguese, the scholarly study of war is sometimes called polemology, from the Greek polemos, meaning war, and -logy, meaning the study of. Studies of war by military theorists throughout military history have sought to identify the philosophy of war, asymmetric warfare is a conflict between two populations of drastically different levels of military capability or size. Biological warfare, or germ warfare, is the use of weaponized biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, chemical warfare involves the use of weaponized chemicals in combat. Poison gas as a weapon was principally used during World War I. Civil war is a war between forces belonging to the nation or political entity. Conventional warfare is declared war between states in which nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons are not used or see limited deployment, cyberwarfare involves the actions by a nation-state or international organization to attack and attempt to damage another nations information systems. Information warfare is the application of force on a large scale against information assets and systems, against the computers. Nuclear warfare is warfare in which weapons are the primary, or a major. War of aggression is a war for conquest or gain rather than self-defense, the earliest recorded evidence of war belongs to the Mesolithic cemetery Site 117, which has been determined to be approximately 14,000 years old. About forty-five percent of the skeletons there displayed signs of violent death, since the rise of the state some 5,000 years ago, military activity has occurred over much of the globe. The advent of gunpowder and the acceleration of technological advances led to modern warfare
2.
Military history
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On the other hand, Just War Theory explores the moral dimensions of warfare, and to better limit the destructive reality caused by war, seeks to establish a doctrine of military ethics. The discipline of history is dynamic, changing with development as much of the subject area as the societies. An important recent concept is the Revolution in Military Affairs which attempts to explain how warfare has been shaped by emerging technologies and it highlights the short outbursts of rapid change followed by periods of relative stability. In terms of the profession in major countries, military history is an orphan. William H. McNeill points out, This branch of our discipline flourishes in an intellectual ghetto, the study of military history in universities remains seriously underdeveloped. Indeed, lack of interest in and disdain for military history probably constitute one of the strangest prejudices of the profession, historiography is the study of the history and method of the discipline of history or the study of a specialised topic. In this case, military history with an eye to gaining an accurate assessment of conflicts using all available sources, Military historians use Historiographical analysis in an effort to allow an unbiased, contemporary view of records. Historians utilize their knowledge of government regulation and military organization, and employing a targeted, despite these limits, wars are some of the most studied and detailed periods of human history. Military historians have often compared organization, tactical and strategic ideas, leadership, in the early 1980s, historian Jeffrey Kimball surveyed the ideological preferences of 109 active diplomatic historians in the United States as well as 54 active military historians. He reports that, Of historians in the field of history, 7% are Socialist, 19% are Other, 53% are Liberal, 11% are None. Of military historians, 0% are Socialist, 8% are Other, 35% are Liberal, 18% are None, the documentation of military history begins with the confrontation between Sumer and Elam c.2700 BC near the modern Basra, and includes such enduring records as the Hebrew Bible. Other prominent records in history are the Trojan War in Homers Iliad. An approach centered on the analysis of a leader was taken by Xenophon in Anabasis, the records of the Roman Julius Caesar enable a comparative approach for campaigns such as Commentarii de Bello Gallico and Commentarii de Bello Civili. New weapons development can dramatically alter the face of war, the cost of warfare, the preparations, a rule of thumb is that if your enemy has a potentially war winning weapon, you have to either match it or neutralize it. The chariot was an effective, fast weapon, while one man controlled the maneuvering of the chariot and these became crucial to the maintenance of several governments, including the New Egyptian Kingdom and the Shang Dynasty and the nation states of early to mid Zhou dynasty. The infantry started as opposing armed groups of soldiers underneath commanders, the Greeks and early Romans used rigid, heavily armed phalanxes. The Macedonians and Hellenistic states would adopt phalanx formations with sarissa pikemen, the Romans would later adopt more flexible maniples from their neighbors which made them extremely successful in the field of battle. The kingdoms of the Warring States in East Asia also adopted infantry combat, in the Sicilian Expedition, led by Athens in an attempt to subdue Syracuse, the well-trained Syracusan cavalry became crucial to the success of the Syracusans
3.
Medieval warfare
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Medieval warfare is the European warfare of the Middle Ages. Technological, cultural, and social developments had forced a dramatic transformation in the character of warfare from antiquity, changing military tactics, in terms of fortification, the Middle Ages saw the emergence of the castle in Europe, which then spread to Western Asia. Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus wrote De re militari possibly in the late 4th century, described by historian Walter Goffart as the bible of warfare throughout the Middle Ages, De re militari was widely distributed through the Latin West. While Western Europe relied on a text for the basis of its military knowledge. According to Vegetius, infantry was the most important element of an army because it was compared to cavalry. One of the tenets he put forward was that a general should only engage in battle when he was sure of victory or had no other choice, as archaeologist Robert Liddiard explains, Pitched battles, particularly in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, were rare. Historian Michael Clanchy noted the medieval axiom that laymen are illiterate and its converse that clergy are literate, so it may be the case that few soldiers read Vegetius work. While it is uncertain to what extent his work was read by the class as opposed to the clergy. In Europe, breakdowns in centralized power led to the rise of a number of groups that turned to large-scale pillage as a source of income, most notably the Vikings raided significantly. As these groups were small and needed to move quickly, building fortifications was a good way to provide refuge and protection for the people. These fortifications evolved over the course of the Middle Ages, the most important form being the castle, the castle served as a protected place for the local elites. Fortifications were an important part of warfare because they provided safety to the lord, his family. They provided refuge from armies too large to face in open battle, the ability of the heavy cavalry to dominate a battle on an open field was useless against fortifications. Building siege engines was a process, and could seldom be effectively done without preparations before the campaign. Many sieges could take months, if not years, to weaken or demoralize the defenders sufficiently, Siege techniques also included mining in which tunnels were dug under a section of the wall and then rapidly collapsed to destabilize the walls foundation. A final technique was to bore into the walls, however this was not nearly as effective as other methods due to the thickness of castle walls. Several of these techniques were used by the Romans but experienced a rebirth during the Crusades. Advances in the prosecution of sieges encouraged the development of a variety of defensive counter-measures, arrow slits, concealed doors for sallies, and deep water wells were also integral to resisting siege at this time
4.
Early modern warfare
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This entire period is contained within the Age of Sail, which characteristic dominated the eras naval tactics, including the use of gunpowder in naval artillery. In the Horn of Africa, the Adals conquest of Ethiopia and the involving of the Ottomans, Mamluks, the earliest surviving bronze hand cannon, dates to 1288, during the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty of China. Gunpowder warfare was used in the Mongol invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281, Japanese scrolls contain illustrations of bombs used by the Yuan-Mongol forces against mounted samurai. In 1326 the earliest known European picture of a gun appeared in a manuscript by Walter de Milemete, in 1350, Petrarch wrote that the presence of cannons on the battlefield was as common and familiar as other kinds of arms. Early artillery played a role in the 100 Years War. The period from 1500–1801 saw an advance in techniques of fortification in Europe. Whereas medieval castles had relied on high walls to keep out attackers, to do this, engineers developed a style of fortress known as the trace italienne or Italian style. These had low, thick, sloping walls, that would absorb or glance off cannon fire. In addition, they were shaped like stars, with bastions protruding at sharp angles, the reason for this was to ensure that every bastion could be supported with fire from an adjacent bastion, leaving no dead ground for an attacker to take cover in. These new fortifications quickly negated the advantages cannon had offered to besiegers, a polygonal fort is a fortification in the style that evolved around the middle of the 18th century, in response to the development of explosive shells. The polygonal style of fortification is described as a flankless fort. Many such forts were built in the United Kingdom and the British Empire during the government of Lord Palmerston and their low profile makes them easy to overlook. In response to the vulnerabilities of star forts, military engineers evolved a much simpler but more robust style of fortification. An example of style can be seen at Fort McHenry in Baltimore in the United States of America. The power of aristocracies vis à vis states diminished throughout Western Europe during this period, aristocrats 200- to 400-year-old ancestral castles no longer provided useful defences against artillery. The nobilitys importance in warfare also eroded as medieval heavy cavalry lost its role in battle. The heavy cavalry - made up of armored knights - had begun to fade in importance in the Late Middle Ages, the English longbow and the Swiss pike had both proven their ability to devastate larger armed forces of mounted knights. However, the use of the longbow required a lifetime of training, making it impossible to amass very large forces of archers
5.
Industrial warfare
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The era featured mass-conscripted armies, rapid transportation, telegraph and wireless communications, and the concept of total war. One of the features of industrial warfare is the concept of total war. There are several reasons for the rise of total warfare in the 19th century, as countries capital and natural resources grew, it became clear that some forms of warfare demanded more resources than others. Consequently, the greater cost of warfare became evident, an industrialized nation could distinguish and then choose the intensity of warfare that it wished to engage in. Additionally, warfare was becoming more mechanized and required greater infrastructure, combatants could no longer live off the land, but required an extensive support network of people behind the lines to keep them fed and armed. This required the mobilization of the home front, modern concepts like propaganda were first used to boost production and maintain morale, while rationing took place to provide more war materiel. The earliest modern example of war was the American Civil War. They believed that to break the backbone of the South, the North had to employ scorched earth tactics, or as Sherman called it, Shermans advance through Georgia and the Carolinas was characterized by widespread destruction of civilian supplies and infrastructure. In contrast to later conflicts, the damage done by Sherman was almost entirely limited to property destruction, in Georgia alone, Sherman claimed he and his men had caused $100,000,000 in damages. Conscription is the enrollment of civilians into military service. Conscription allowed the French Republic to form La Grande Armée, what Napoleon Bonaparte called the nation in arms, for instance, during World War I, bitter political disputes broke out in Canada, Newfoundland, Australia and New Zealand over conscription. Canada also had a dispute over conscription during World War II. Both South Africa and Australia put limits on where conscripts could fight in WWII, similarly, mass protests against conscription to fight the Vietnam War occurred in several countries in the late 1960s. Russia, as well as smaller nations such as Switzerland. Prior to the invention of the transport, combatants were transported from by wagons, horses. With the advent of locomotives, large groups of combatants, supplies, to counter this, an opposing force would destroy rail lines to hinder their enemies movements. General Shermans men during the American Civil War, would destroy tracks, heat the rails, the mass transportation of combatants was further revolutionized with the advent of the internal combustion engine and the automobile. Combined with the use of the machine gun, the horse
6.
Mountain warfare
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Mountain warfare refers to warfare in the mountains or similarly rough terrain. This type of warfare is also called Alpine warfare, after the Alps mountains, Mountain warfare is one of the most dangerous types of combat as it involves surviving not only combat with the enemy but also the extreme weather and dangerous terrain. Mountain ranges are of importance since they often act as a natural border. Attacking a prepared enemy position in mountain terrain requires a ratio of attacking soldiers to defending soldiers than a war conducted on level ground. Movement, reinforcements, and medical evacuation up and down steep slopes, the term mountain warfare is said to have come about in the Middle Ages after the monarchies of Europe found it difficult to fight the Swiss armies in the Alps. This was because the Swiss were able to fight in smaller units, similar styles of attack and defence were later employed by guerrillas, partisans and irregulars who hid in the mountains after an attack, making it challenging for an army of regulars to fight back. In Bonapartes Italian campaign, and the 1809 rebellion in Tyrol, other example of mountain warfare was the Crossing of the Andes carried out by the Argentinean Army of the Andes commanded by Gen José de San Martín in 1817. One of the division passed 5000 m height, Mountain warfare came to the fore once again, during World War I, when some of the nations involved in the war had mountain divisions that had hitherto not been tested. During the summer of 1918, the Battle of San Matteo took place on the Italian front, in December 1914, another offensive was launched by the Turkish supreme commander Enver Pasha with 95, 000-190,000 troops against the Russians in the Caucasus. Insisting on an attack against Russian positions in the mountains in the heart of winter. Since the partition in 1947, both countries have been locked in skirmishes and wars mainly in this Himalayan region with the highest mountains in the world. The first hostilities between the two nations in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947 showed that both were ill-equipped to fight in biting cold, let alone at the highest altitudes in the world. During the Sino-Indian War of 1962, hostilities broke out between the Republic of India and the Peoples Republic of China at some of the highest altitudes over the Himalayan mountains. Later wars between India and Pakistan were mainly fought in the rather than in the mountains, although several major mountain battles took place in all these conflicts. This changed in the Kargil War when Indian forces were faced with the task of flushing out intruders. This proxy warfare became the modern war that was fought exclusively on mountains. South Georgia is an island, and since the war took place during the southern winter. It was unusual, in that it combined aspects of water long range expeditions, Arctic warfare
7.
Space warfare
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Space warfare is combat that takes place in outer space, i. e. outside an atmosphere. Space warfare therefore includes ground-to-space warfare, such as attacking satellites from the Earth, as well as space-to-space warfare and it does not include the use of satellites for espionage, surveillance, or military communications. For example, one might describe a system in which troops are deployed from orbit as space warfare. In the early 1960s the U. S. military produced a film called Space, from 1985 to 2002 there was a United States Space Command, which in 2002 merged with the United States Strategic Command. Only a few incidents of warfare have occurred in world history. In the mid-1980s a USAF pilot in an F-15 successfully shot down the P78-1, in 2007 China used a missile system to destroy one of its obsolete satellites, and in 2008 the United States similarly destroyed its malfunctioning satellite USA-193. As of 2016 there have no human casualties resulting from conflict in space. International treaties governing space limit or regulate conflicts in space and limit the installation of weapon systems, similar planning in the United States took the form of the Blue Gemini project, which consisted of modified Gemini capsules that would be able to deploy weapons and perform surveillance. The result was a deactivation of many then-orbiting satellites, both American and Soviet, the deleterious and unfocused effects of the EMP test led to the banning of nuclear weapons in space in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967. Through the 1970s, the Soviet Union continued their project and test-fired a cannon to test space station defense and this was considered too dangerous to do with a crew on board, however, so the test was conducted after the crew had returned to Earth. Space warfare strongly influenced the design of the United States Space Shuttle. The distinctive delta wing shape was needed if the shuttle were to launch a military payload towards the Soviet Union, both the Soviets and the United States developed anti-satellite weaponry designed to shoot down satellites. While early efforts paralleled other space-to-space warfare concepts, the United States was able in the 1980s to develop ground-to-space laser anti-satellite weapons. None of these systems are known to be today, however. The Peoples Republic of China successfully tested a ballistic missile-launched anti-satellite weapon on January 11,2007 and this resulted in harsh criticism from the United States of America, Britain, and Japan. See 2007 Chinese anti-satellite missile test, the U. S. developed an interceptor missile, the SM-3, testing it by hitting ballistic test targets while they were in space. On February 21,2008, the U. S. used a SM-3 missile to destroy a spy satellite, USA-193, Japan fields the U. S. -made SM-3 missile, and there have been plans to base the land-based version in Romania and Vietnam. In the late 1970s and through the 1980s the Soviet Union, Space warfare was seen primarily as an extension of nuclear warfare, and so many theoretical systems were based around the destruction or defense of ground and sea-based missiles
8.
Weapon
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A weapon, arm, or armament is any device used with intent to inflict damage or harm to living beings, structures, or systems. Weapons are used to increase the efficacy and efficiency of such as hunting, crime, law enforcement, self-defense. In a broader context, weapons may be construed to include anything used to gain a strategic, something that has been re-purposed, converted, or enhanced to become a weapon of war is termed weaponized, such as a weaponized virus or weaponized lasers. The use of objects as weapons has been observed among chimpanzees, however, this can not be confirmed using physical evidence because wooden clubs, spears, and unshaped stones would not have left an unambiguous record. The earliest unambiguous weapons to be found are the Schöninger Speere, the first defensive structures and fortifications appeared in the Bronze Age, indicating an increased need for security. Weapons designed to breach fortifications followed soon after, for example the battering ram was in use by 2500 BC, although early Iron Age swords were not superior to their bronze predecessors, once iron-working developed, around 1300 BC in Greece Alex Webb, Metalworking in Ancient Greece. Domestication of the horse and widespread use of spoked wheels by ca.2000 BC, led to the light, the mobility provided by chariots were important during this era. Spoke-wheeled chariot usage peaked around 1300 BC and then declined, ceasing to be militarily relevant by the 4th century BC. Cavalry developed once horses were bred to support the weight of a man, the horse extended the range and increased the speed of attacks. Ships built as weapons or warships such as the trireme were in use by the 7th century BC and these ships were eventually replaced by larger ships by the 4th century BC. European warfare during the Post-classical history was dominated by groups of knights supported by massed infantry. They were involved in combat and sieges which involved various siege weapons. Knights on horseback developed tactics for charging with lances providing an impact on the enemy formations, whereas infantry, in the age before structured formations, relied on cheap, sturdy weapons such as spears and billhooks in close combat and bows from a distance. As armies became more professional, their equipment was standardized and infantry transitioned to pikes, pikes are normally seven to eight feet in length, in conjunction with smaller side-arms. In Eastern and Middle Eastern warfare, similar tactics were developed independent of European influences, the introduction of gunpowder from the Far East at the end of this period revolutionized warfare. Formations of musketeers, protected by pikemen came to dominate open battles, the European Renaissance marked the beginning of the implementation of firearms in western warfare. Guns and rockets were introduced to the battlefield, firearms are qualitatively different from earlier weapons because they release energy from combustible propellants such as gunpowder, rather than from a counter-weight or spring. This energy is released very rapidly and can be replicated without much effort by the user, therefore even early firearms such as the arquebus were much more powerful than human-powered weapons. During the U. S. Civil War various technologies including the gun and ironclad warship emerged that would be recognizable and useful military weapons today
9.
Armoured warfare
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Armoured warfare, mechanised warfare or tank warfare is the use of armoured fighting vehicles in modern warfare. It is a component of modern methods of war. The premise of armoured warfare rests on the ability of troops to penetrate defensive lines through use of manoeuvre by armoured units. Under these conditions, any sort of advance was very slow. Tanks were first developed in Britain and France in 1915, as a way of navigating the barbed wire, British Mark I tanks first went to action at the Somme, on 15 September 1916, but did not manage to break the deadlock of trench warfare. The first French employment on 16 April 1917, of the Schneider CA, was also a failure, in the Battle of Cambrai British tanks were more successful, and broke a German trenchline system, the Hindenburg Line. Despite the generally unpromising beginnings, the military and political leadership in both Britain and France during 1917 backed large investments into armoured vehicle production and this led to a sharp increase in the number of available tanks for 1918. The German Empire to the contrary, produced only a few tanks, twenty German A7V tanks were produced during the entire conflict, compared to over 4,400 French and over 2,500 British tanks of various kinds. Tactically, the deployment of armour during the war was typified by an emphasis on direct infantry support. The tanks main tasks were seen as crushing barbed wire and destroying machine-gun nests, theoretical debate largely focussed on the question whether a swarm of light tanks should be used for this or a limited number of potent heavy vehicles. Though in the Battle of Cambrai a large concentration of British heavy tanks effected a breakthrough, the manoeuvrability of the tank should at least in theory regain armies the ability to flank enemy lines. Following the First World War, the technical and doctrinal aspects of armoured warfare became more sophisticated and diverged into multiple schools of doctrinal thought, during the 1920s, only very few tanks were produced. There were however, important theoretical and technical developments, various British and French commanders who had contributed to the origin of the tank, such as Jean Baptiste Eugène Estienne, B. H. Liddell Hart and J. F. C. Fuller, theorised about a future use of independent armoured forces, containing a large concentration of tanks. Especially Liddell Hart wrote many books about the subject, partly propagating Fullers theories, such doctrines were faced with the reality that during the 1920s the armoured vehicles, as early road transport in general, were extremely unreliable, and could not be used in sustained operations. Mainstream thought on the subject was more conservative and tried to integrate armoured vehicles into the infantry and cavalry organisation. To save weight, such designs had thin armour plating and this inspired fitting small-calibre high-velocity guns in turrets, J. Collins, after Fuller refused the function. The unit carried out operations on Salisbury Plain and was observed by the major nations, the United States, Germany
10.
Artillery
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Artillery is a class of large military weapons built to fire munitions far beyond the range and power of infantrys small arms. Early artillery development focused on the ability to breach fortifications, and led to heavy, as technology improved, lighter, more mobile field artillery developed for battlefield use. This development continues today, modern self-propelled artillery vehicles are highly mobile weapons of great versatility providing the largest share of an armys total firepower, in its earliest sense, the word artillery referred to any group of soldiers primarily armed with some form of manufactured weapon or armour. In common speech, the artillery is often used to refer to individual devices, along with their accessories and fittings. However, there is no generally recognised generic term for a gun, howitzer, mortar, and so forth, the United States uses artillery piece, the projectiles fired are typically either shot or shell. Shell is a widely used term for a projectile, which is a component of munitions. By association, artillery may also refer to the arm of service that customarily operates such engines, in the 20th Century technology based target acquisition devices, such as radar, and systems, such as sound ranging and flash spotting, emerged to acquire targets, primarily for artillery. These are usually operated by one or more of the artillery arms, Artillery originated for use against ground targets—against infantry, cavalry and other artillery. An early specialist development was coastal artillery for use against enemy ships, the early 20th Century saw the development of a new class of artillery for use against aircraft, anti-aircraft guns. Artillery is arguably the most lethal form of land-based armament currently employed, the majority of combat deaths in the Napoleonic Wars, World War I, and World War II were caused by artillery. In 1944, Joseph Stalin said in a speech that artillery was the God of War, although not called as such, machines performing the role recognizable as artillery have been employed in warfare since antiquity. The first references in the historical tradition begin at Syracuse in 399 BC. From the Middle Ages through most of the era, artillery pieces on land were moved by horse-drawn gun carriages. In the contemporary era, the artillery and crew rely on wheeled or tracked vehicles as transportation, Artillery used by naval forces has changed significantly also, with missiles replacing guns in surface warfare. The engineering designs of the means of delivery have likewise changed significantly over time, in some armies, the weapon of artillery is the projectile, not the equipment that fires it. The process of delivering fire onto the target is called gunnery, the actions involved in operating the piece are collectively called serving the gun by the detachment or gun crew, constituting either direct or indirect artillery fire. The term gunner is used in armed forces for the soldiers and sailors with the primary function of using artillery. The gunners and their guns are usually grouped in teams called either crews or detachments, several such crews and teams with other functions are combined into a unit of artillery, usually called a battery, although sometimes called a company
