(6) ARTILLERY WARFARE

 

“The god of war” according to Stalin – generally providing the majority of the total firepower for modern armies as well as causing the majority of combat deaths in the Napoleonic Wars and world wars.

“Artillery consists of ranged weapons that launch munitions far beyond the range and power of infantry firearms” – “since the introduction of gunpowder and cannon, artillery has largely meant cannon, and in contemporary usage, usually refers to shell-firing guns, howitzers, and mortars…and rocket artillery”.

Hence, artillery is a large part, if not the primary part, of the firepower that transformed infantry warfare and made cavalry warfare obsolete in modern history – although with some caveat that infantry firepower has also been transformed in ways that matches or eclipses historic artillery, such as RPGs or rocket-propelled grenades.

As we have seen, it has also transformed naval warfare, by becoming the predominant means of that warfare as opposed to the boarding or ramming of ships that preceded it – as well as coastal artillery to defend against ships.

And it is only apt that artillery warfare is the next entry after siege and urban warfare – “early artillery development focused on the ability to breach defensive walls and fortifications during siege and led to heavy, fairly immobile siege engines”.

“Although not called by that name, siege engines performing the role recognizable as artillery have been employed in warfare since antiquity. The first known catapult was developed in Syracuse in 399 BC. Until the introduction of  gunpowder into western warfare, artillery was dependent upon mechanical energy, which not only severely limited the kinetic energy of the projectiles, but also required the construction of very large engines to accumulate sufficient energy. A 1st-century BC Roman catapult launching 6.55 kg (14.4 lb) stones achieved a kinetic energy of 16 kilojoules, compared to a mid-19th-century 12-pounder gun, which fired a 4.1 kg (9.0 lb) round, with a kinetic energy of 240 kilojoules, or a 20th-century US battleship that fired a 1,225 kg (2,701 lb) projectile from its main battery with an energy level surpassing 350 megajoules.”

With lighter and more mobile artillery through technological improvement there came feild artillery – usually horse-drawn prior to the steam and internal combustion engines that saw railway guns, the largest artillery ever conceived, and the artillery, both offensive and defensive, of the next two entries.

Such is the modern importance of artillery that it is typically its own arm of service within modern armies – as well as navies and air forces for coastal and anti-aircraft artillery respectively, although organization and practice varies.

Technological improvement of artillery not only involves the delivery systems or “engines” as well the projectiles or munitions fired or launched by them, but also target acquisition and techniques or “fire control”.

 

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

 

(7) MECHANIZED & ARMORED WAR

 

Where the steam engine transformed naval warfare, the internal combustion engine transformed warfare on land – as well as the balance between land and sea in warfare.

Let me elaborate.

Sure, the steam engine, used for trains and railways, also transformed warfare on land but more in logistics and mobilization than actual combat.

However, to transform combat on land – and replace cavalry for mobile warfare – it took the advent of the internal combustion engine for vehicles used in war from the twentieth century onwards.

What is often overlooked is that the advent of the internal combustion engine in war also reversed the balance between a seaborne invading force and the land-based defending force. Prior to the internal combustion engine, a seaborne force had the advantage of greater mobility and speed bringing troops and supplies to a beachhead over the land-based force defending it. After the internal combustion engine, the land-based force had that advantage.

Mechanized warfare, often interchangeably used with armored warfare given how much both are represented tanks, “is the operational use of armored fighting vehicles—such as tanks, armored personnel carriers, and self-propelled artillery—combined with motorized infantry to achieve rapid movement, high firepower, and protection on the battlefield. It represents a shift from infantry-centric fighting to machine-driven combat, originating in WWI”.

While the tank is definitive of mechanized warfare (and obviously of armored warfare), it is not the war-breaking weapon in isolation as it is often seen to be in popular imagination. Indeed, tanks in isolation without support are dangerously vulnerable to counterattack, particularly with the advent of artillery and infantry anti-tank weaponry in the Second World War. I’ve read that tanks aren’t even the best weapon to use against other tanks.

Instead, tanks are used as part of combined arms strategy or tactics – “much of the application of armoured warfare depends on the use of tanks and related vehicles used by other supporting arms such as infantry fighting vehicles, self-propelled artillery, and other combat vehicles, as well as mounted combat engineers and other support units”.

The use of tanks has been inflated in popular imagination by their identification as the instrument of German blitzkrieg in the Second World War. Setting aside that blitzkrieg itself was a propaganda term applied to traditional German maneuver warfare (Bewegungskrieg), tanks were obviously important but as a component of combined arms – H.P. Willmott argued that the use of radio (to coordinate combined arms) was the more decisive component. Even then, the success of German “blitzkrieg” reflected a brief window where the balance swung in favor of mobile offensive firepower over defence, but the balance swang back towards defensive firepower during the Second World War – hence the strength of German defence in the latter part of the war and the relatively greater force the Allies required to overcome it.

 

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

 

(8) AERIAL WARFARE

 

War in air!

It’s commonly observed that only 66 years separated the American Wright Brothers’ flights in 1903, recognized to be “the first sustained and controlled heavier than air powered flight”, and the moon landing in 1969.

However, less than a decade separated those flights from the first use of aircraft in war, the Italo-Turkish War in 1911, although their more famous and prolific use was in the First World War, firstly for aerial reconnaissance but then for aerial combat, air support and bombing.

Such was the development of military airpower in only two decades after the First World War that it became of decisive importance in the Second World War, particularly for achieving air superiority or supremacy – arguably to the extent of war-breaking importance, as the critical margin of victory or defeat, but not war-winning of itself.

Military airpower has only increased since then – with jets, missiles, more powerful or precise munitions, electronic or stealth technology, and drones or unmanned aerial vehicles – but the jury is still out whether airpower alone can win wars, at least in the absence of another entry in this top ten. Still, it can come damn close, perhaps even win on occasion by itself or with minimal use of ground forces.

“Aerial warfare includes bombers attacking enemy installations or a concentration of enemy troops or strategic targets; fighter aircraft battling for control of airspace; attack aircraft engaging in close air support against ground targets; naval aviation flying against sea and nearby land targets; gliders, helicopters and other aircraft to carry airborne forces such as paratroopers; aerial refueling tankers to extend operation time or range; and military transport aircraft to move cargo and personnel.”

That is hardly exhaustive of military airpower. Kites and balloons, manned and unmanned, were used in warfare even prior to heavier than air powered flight, primarily for reconnaissance, and continue to have applications since. Lighter-than-air airships have also been used in warfare, with the high point (heh) of their use for bombing cities in the First World War although they had and continue to have more limited applications.

Returning to heavier than air powered aircraft, they have also been used and continued to be used for communications, command and control as well as early warning, surveillance, and intelligence. There’s also the use of aircraft for evacuation and rescue – as well as the medical transport, such as the titular Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals of the TV series with its iconic helicopter ambulance opening scene.

On the other side, “surface forces are likely to respond to enemy air activity with anti-aircraft warfare”.

 

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

 

 

(9) DRONE WARFARE

 

Drones, drone strikes and drone swarms.

“Drone warfare is a form of warfare that involves the deployment of military robots and unmanned systems. The unmanned systems may be remoted controlled by a pilot or have varying levels of autonomy during their mission, enhancing offensive and defensive capabilities while reducing the need for personnel.”

‘Nuff said, except that drone warfare is not only emerging as the type of warfare that defines the conflicts of the twenty-first century, but also a game-changing one that increasingly defines their battlespace.

And I say battlespace to invoke the multiple domains of drone warfare – “types of unmanned systems and platforms include unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV) or weaponized commercial unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), unmanned surface vehicles (USV) or unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV), and unmanned ground vehicles (UGV)”.

“Military applications of drones range from reconnaissance tasks, kamikaze missions, logistical support, bomb disposal, training and medical evacuation to electronic warfare, anti-war, anti-armor, and anti-personnel roles…Drones are primarily utilized to conduct intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance (ISTAR) missions, facilitating direct attacks on targets”.

Drone warfare was defined by US drone strikes in the War on Terror but has “evolved and proliferated quickly in the 2010s and 2020s”. Even so, I wouldn’t have ranked it in my top ten before the Russo-Ukrainian War, which saw it rise to game-changing prominence that’s here to stay.

“The Russo-Ukrainian war is widely recognised as the world’s first drone war due to the large scale and high intensity of drone attacks, and the role of this experience in evolving the tactics of modern conventional warfare…The Russo-Ukrainian war demonstrated how drones have disrupted traditional military doctrines in a manner similar to how gunpowder revolutionized warfare, making them a decisive factor in all future conflicts.”

Such is the role of drones in that war that “Ukraine became the first country to create a military branch exclusively dedicated to drone warfare – the Unmanned Systems Forces”, with Russia following suit and I anticipate more to follow beyond that war and its combatants.

 

RATING:

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

 

 

(10) NUCLEAR WARFARE

 

“It’s Defcon One…get me Big Mac, fries to go!”

Few forms of warfare have loomed as large as nuclear warfare but at the same time to have never existed in actual warfare except as threat or hypothetical prospect with one exception – fortunately, “the first and only use of nuclear weapons in armed conflict was the United States atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki”.

While nuclear weapons haven’t been used in warfare apart from that exception, that hasn’t stopped a select few nations with the means to acquire or develop them, primarily the United States and the Soviet Union or Russia, from detonating them “on over 2,000 occasions for various testing purposes” or deploying them on a large scale in readiness for use.

The prospect or threat of nuclear warfare has effectively operated as a limit on other forms of warfare, at least directly between states with nuclear weapons, to avoid escalating to nuclear warfare with each other, given the sheer destructive potential of mutually assured destruction at best and the possibility of human extinction at worst – “nuclear winter, nuclear famine, and societal collapse”, oh my!

And that pretty much sums up nuclear warfare, except for how dangerously close we’ve come to the tripwire for it.

“Countries have increased their readiness to carry out strategic and tactical nuclear attacks in response to intensifying conflicts, including the Korean War, First and Second Taiwan Strait Crises, Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam War, Sino-Soviet border conflict, Yom Kippur War, Gulf War, and Russo-Ukrainian War”.

“The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, between the nuclear superpowers of the U.S. and Soviet Union, is often considered the closest call with a nuclear exchange” – one of two occasions, along with the Yom Kippur War, that the United States was at Defcon Two, the stage before actual deployment in Defcon One.

The other famous measurement of the risk of nuclear war is the Doomsday Clock.

Throw in the extraordinary extent to which states have planned for “limited” nuclear war or had tactical nuclear weapons deployed for use on the battlefield – missiles, munitions, torpedoes and depth charges on the battlefields – as well as the risk of deployment from accident or false alarms, and one sometimes wonders how we ever made it this far without nuking ourselves.

 

RATING:

X-TIER (WILD TIER)