I’ve ranked my Top 10 Wars of history, but it didn’t end there. Nor did it end with my Top 10 Types of War, because there is almost an infinite variety of types by or into which one can classify wars.

Hence these special mentions for types of war, for which there’s certainly enough for my standard twenty special mentions per top ten, including my usual weird and wild special mentions towards the end.

 

S-TIER (GOD TIER)

 

 

 

 

(1) PREHISTORIC & PRIMAL WARFARE

 

Hobbes vs Rousseau – the Hobbesian state of nature or “the war of all against all” (bellum omnium contra omnes) as against Rousseau’s more noble savage state of nature.

Sadly this special mention is not for some Great Prehistoric War fought between mammoth cavalry and evil Atlantean overlords in the style of the film 10,000 BC – or a tyrannosaur-riding Neanderthal fighting off everything in the style of the Primal animated TV series, although that series seems closer to Hobbes’ state of nature.

It’s for the sheer timescale of prehistoric war compared to historic war, corresponding to the scale of prehistory in general compared to history – 98% or so of the entire span of humanity on this planet so far, all but the last 5,000 years or so out of 300,000 years. And prehistory only gets longer if you throw in our hominin ancestor species as humanity, which potentially lengthens that span to 3,000,000 years.

There’s also that prehistory didn’t just disappear with the advent of recorded history – or rather didn’t consistently disappear across time and place, instead enduring in places more remote from recorded history until the modern period. And prehistoric war hasn’t even ended now, hence the better description would be primal war – as a type of war, exemplified by ambush and raid, to which humanity regularly returns, atavistically time and time again.

Most fundamentally, there’s Hobbes vs Rousseau – the philosophical significance of prehistoric war in understanding the origins of war itself.

Of course, the origins of war in prehistory is the subject of theory or outright speculation, as by its nature prehistory involves those human societies without recorded history – typically Neolithic or Paleolithic, but potentially also more recent societies without written historical records.

It’s where prehistory meets philosophy, hence the opening dialectic of Hobbes versus Rousseau – the ongoing debate over human nature and violence or war. “The existence — and even the definition — of war in humanity’s hypothetical state of nature has been a controversial topic in the history of ideas”.

Philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously proposed that the original “state of nature” of humanity (or human nature) was inherently violent – the war of all against all in which “the life of man” is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”. Against that, philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau also famously proposed a more idealistic and idyllic state of nature as more free and peaceful – subsequently styled as that of the “noble savage” – made unequal and violent by “civilized” society.

That debate over human nature continues, not least in speculation or theories of prehistoric war, “spanning contemporary anthropology, archaeology, ethnography, history, political science, psychology, primatology, and philosophy in such divergent books as Azar Gat’s War in Human Civilization and Raymond C. Kelly’s Warless Societies and the Origin of War.”

Essentially, it boils down to those who argue for prehistoric war and violence, potentially at even higher rates than those in recorded history, and those who argue for more peaceful prehistory.

To put it that simply, however, removes all context or nuance from a debate that is much more balanced or varied, reflecting a more complex situation – that prehistory was both more violent than asserted by proponents of prehistoric pacifism and also more pacific than asserted by prehistoric warmongers.

Most concede that violence or war in human prehistory was highly variable between different societies at different times in different places or circumstances. Some societies were notoriously warlike, such as the Maori of New Zealand, the Yanomami (dubbed “the Fierce People”) of the Amazon or the inter-tribal warfare in Papua New Guinea.

On the one hand, archaeological studies of human remains from prehistory have suggested a higher rate for violent injury and death substantially above those in recorded history. One interesting feature is that a recurring motive for inter-tribal warfare is raiding for nubile women – as with the Yanomami, suggesting that the legendary motive for the Trojan War may not be so far removed from the historic or prehistoric truth.

On the other hand, depictions of human violence or war is comparatively rare until relatively recently in prehistoric art. Proponents of prehistoric pacificism persuasively suggest that low population density among prehistoric tribal hunter-gatherers – and the potential costly nature of violence between them – both allowed for and pushed towards avoiding conflict, typically by migration.

Another issue is that even if or where Paleolithic societies were violent, the scale of that violence was necessarily limited or disorganized – in the nature of feuds and raids or ambushes and skirmishes. Some argue for what is termed endemic warfare – in which “war is often ritualized with a number of taboos and practices that limit the number of casualties and the duration of the conflict”. Of course, endemic warfare could readily escalate into actual warfare without such limits.

Others have also asserted various historic or prehistoric event horizons that saw the escalation of war. One such is the development of missile weapons such as bows or slings allowing for less risk than melee combat. Another more commonly argued one is the horizon between the Paleolithic and Neolithic – with the increased sedentism from agriculture in the Neolithic seeing a corresponding increase in the intensity of scale in war.

One obvious model for theories of prehistoric war is more recent or contemporary tribal warfare. And one could argue that tribal war remains the predominant model for war in general – that most wars in history are tribal wars at heart.

 

 

 

 

(2) PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE

 

Psywar, psyops, military information support operations, political warfare, hearts and minds, shock and awe, show of force, propaganda, disinformation

All warfare is psychological warfare.

No, seriously.

Yes, I know the term psychological warfare is usually to connote means of targeting an adversary’s morale or collective psyche – whether of their military, civilian population, or political state (or any part or combination of those) – apart from (or adjacent to) the use of military force.

However, war has always used psychological ‘force’  (and ‘space’ or ‘time’) – such as bluff, deception and intimidation for fear and shock – as much as physical force in combat from its very origin in prehistoric or primal warfare (to the extent we can infer it from observations of more contemporary tribal warfare) or even animal intra-species conflict.

After all, it’s best to reduce your enemy’s fighting power by reducing their cohesion, discipline, morale, resilience or resistance (or alternatively increase your own) – and better yet to avoid as much fighting (or as many casualties) as possible by causing them to break altogether into desertion, flight, retreat, rout or surrender (or alternatively mobilize your own forces against such things). In short, defeating the will of your enemy.

There’s Hannibal or the Mongols using deception or subtertuge to give the impression of forces as present or to inflate the apparent size of their forces. There’s the Mongols – quite the practitioners of psychological warfare – using the carrot of leniency and the stick of annihilation to encourage surrender. There’s the use of sirens on German Stuka aircraft in WW2 for their psychological effect (as well as other uses).

Of course, it’s not always about ‘negative’ impact, reducing or breaking your enemy. It can also be about ‘positive impact’, such as enlisting them to you – although that tends to involve the more usual usage of psychological warfare against their civilian populations or political states apart from or adjacent to the use of military force.

“Psychological warfare involves the planned use of propaganda, fear, and manipulation to influence the emotions, attitudes, and behavior of an opposition group, without relying on physical force. Its primary goal is to break an enemy’s will to fight, undermine morale, and cause confusion.”

Tactics of psychological warfare – particularly in the usual sense of not involving military force – include propaganda, disinformation or deception, demoralization and intimidation.

“The term is used to denote any action which is practiced mainly by psychological methods with the aim of evoking a planned psychological reaction in other people” – “various techniques aimed at influencing a target audience’s value system, belief system, emotions, motives, reasoning, or behavior.”

 

 

 

(3) RELIGIOUS WARFARE

 

Holy war, jihad and crusade.

All warfare is religious warfare.

Well, not really, although it is commonly observed that modern ideological warfare is religious warfare by another name. I also see religious warfare as being wider than the term is usually applied – essentially as a subset of the psychological warfare that is ubiquitous throughout warfare. Granted, that subset is more about motivating or mobilizing your own fighting power by increasing cohesion, discipline, morale, resilience or resistance – essentially religion as a force multiplier, although it can extend to eliminating or reducing your enemy’s religion for the same effect in reverse.

As such, it arguably has similar origins in prehistory as psychological warfare in general – perhaps not in wars of religion as we understand them but in beliefs of supernatural assistance or protection in combat.

Religious warfare is usually applied to the sectarian wars fought between or within the world’s largest – and distinctively monotheistic – religions, Christianity and Islam, even if those wars overlap with secular causes.

Note that distinctive monotheism – while religious warfare has been identified or at least argued for other religious traditions, both contemporary and historical, it is commonly seen to have particular force for monotheism, notably in Christianity and Islam but also traced back to the traditions of ancient warfare seen in the Bible.

However, religious warfare is an incredibly complex and contentious subject, worthy of its own top ten (or several) – “The degree to which a war may be considered religious depends on many underlying questions, such as the definition of religion, the definition of ‘war’, and the applicability of religion to war as opposed to other possible factors.”

That extends to that observation I’ve frequently seen that all modern wars are wars of religion – to the extent that they are based on political ideologies that resemble religions – although I think it has an element of truth, particularly when applied to the ideological war of WW2.

The more usual observation by historians or those from similar academic disciplines is that only a small minority of wars are religious wars, although I consider that is viewing religious warfare in a narrower sense than I do as a subset of psychological warfare.

 

 

 

(4) TERR0R

 

Psychological and religious warfare lead naturally to terr0r or terr0rism as a type or at least a means of warfare.

Terr0r or terr0rism is obviously a subset of psychological warfare as a means of targeting an adversary’s morale or collective psyche, particularly of their civilian population or political state through violence against them or other non-combatants.

And modern terr0rism is most often associated with religious warfare – one religion in particular although more than one religion has resorted to it. In fairness, religious extremism has been identified by at least one source to have overtaken nationalist separatism to “become the main driver of terr0rist attacks around the world”, although that remains the subject of debate.

While modern terr0rism is usually traced to “19th revolutionary politics”, an “ancient lineage” of pre-modern religious terr0rism has been proposed – with three particular examples of religiously motivated groups, the Thugs or Thuggees in India (made famous by the second Indiana Jones film), the Order of Assassins in medieval Islam (who sadly lack the same movie treatment), and the Jewish Sicarii Zealots in Roman Judaea.

Terr0r in its broadest sense has always been one of the means, probably the most straightforward means if you have the stomach for it as most pre-modern societies did, to deploy psychological force in a war against an opponent in the form of intimidation or manipulation by fear and shock – whether combatants or non-combatants (or both). And by always, I mean from the prehistoric origins of war itself, if the evidence of prehistoric brutality is to be believed or the inference from historical or contemporary observations from tribal warfare is correctly inferred.

One of the best examples of the use of terr0r in war is not surprisingly by the Mongols, who routinely threatened besieged cities with annihilation if they resisted rather than surrendered – and acted on those threats.

On the other hand, terr0rism is a narrower form of the more general terr0r deployed against opponents in war from prehistory onwards – usually defined as terr0r through violence against non-combatants or civilians and typically identified as a development of modern history.

Terr0rism is “the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims…primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war against non-combatants”.

However, “there are various definitions of terr0rism, with no universal agreement about it. Different definitions of terr0rism emphasized its randomness, its aim to instill fear, and its broader impact beyond its immediate victims”.

Apparently, the terms “terr0rist” and “terr0rism” originated during the French Revolution – perhaps not surprisingly given the political terr0r or notorious reign of terr0r in that revolution. Indeed, modern terr0rism originated in the political ideologies that arose from and after that Revolution, combined with the weapons produced by industrial technology that lent themselves to the assassinations or attacks that characterized 19th century terr0rism – notably the pistol and dynamite.

However, both the terms of terr0rist and terr0rism as well as archetypal form of modern terr0rism “became widely used internationally and gained worldwide attention” from the 1970s onwards.

“Various organizations and countries have used terr0rism to achieve their objectives. These include left-wing and right-wing political organizations, nationalist groups, religious groups, revolutionaries, and ruling governments”. That last is represented by ” state terr0rism, with its institutionalized instrumentation of terr0r tactics through massacres, genocides, forced disappearances, carpet bombings, and torture” and is “is a deadlier form of terr0rism than non-state terr0rism”.

 

 

 

(5) ESPIONAGE & INTELLIGENCE

 

Knowledge is power – and war.

Espionage and counterespionage, intelligence and counterintelligence, agents and assets, spies and spycraft, black ops and covert ops, codebreaking and cryptanalysis, deception and disinformation, reconnaissance and surveillance, sabotage and subversion, stealth and subterfuge, honeypot and wetwork.

HUMINT or human intelligence as the thing we usually think about as espionage or intelligence, SIGINT or signals intelligence as the thing that usually is espionage or intelligence, and also all the abbreviated forms of intelligence – COMINT, GEOINT, FININT, IMINT, MASINT, OSINT.

Psychological warfare and terr0r lead naturally to the overlapping subject of espionage and intelligence, in turn incredibly prolific subjects worthy of their own top ten, or indeed several top tens.

Spies have been dubbed the second oldest profession, after pr0stitution as the oldest profession -with considerable overlap between them. Both desciptions as oldest or second oldest professions are more anecdotes than serious analysis, but certainly espionage or spies can be traced back to the Bronze Age ancient history in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

And that’s just because that’s when written records began, as one could almost certainly trace espionage or at least intelligence back to Stone Age prehistory, with the scouting or tracking that can reasonably conjectured to have accompanied prehistoric warfare.

Espionage or spies are mentioned in the two definitive ancient works of Western literature – the Bible and Homer – and very much as a fundamental part of war, as it was in that definitive work of strategy, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.

In the Bible, the Israelites didn’t just launch into their conquest of Canaan cold. Not surprisingly given the short distance involved between Egypt and Canaan, part of that famous forty years in the wilderness was spent sending spies into Canaan – once again with that overlap with the oldest profession, as two such spies were aided by Rahab, widely read to be a harl0t.

Espionage or spies are also mentioned in the Iliad, not surprisingly given it is Western literature’s most famous siege – and of course the Trojan War was famously won by an act of deception or subterfuge, orchestrated by one of Western literature’s great deceptive characters, Odysseus (who is essentially characterized by deception and subterfuge throughout the Odyssey as well).

The Art of War identified spies as a fundamental part of war or military strategy – “The Art of War identifies five types of spies that are essential for gathering intelligence and achieving victory: local spies (citizen informants within the enemy’s territory), inward spies (recruited double agents within the enemy ranks), converted spies (recruited defectors converted to serve your side), doomed spies (expendable fabricators used to spread disinformation; acts as decoy for counter-intelligence), and surviving spies (spies that provide accurate intelligence after gathering information from the enemy).”

Espionage and intelligence have been and continued to be as fundamental to war as military force, indeed inextricably intertwined with the disposition and use of military force. Deploying force without adequate espionage or intelligence of enemy forces is effectively going in blind, such that going in naked would be preferable and perhaps less tempting fate for ambush or defeat. It would be interesting to identify how many military failures are ultimately intelligence failures – my own belief is that it would be a substantial proportion or part.

Even so, some might argue that espionage and intelligence are not of themselves types of war or substitutes for military force in war. To which I would respond firstly that these are special mentions but secondly and more fundamentally, that espionage and intelligence have assumed a role of such importance in warfare that they can be regarded as a type of warfare – espionage or spy warfare, intelligence warfare, deception warfare and so on.

A large part of the world wars – arguably a predominant part for signals intelligence, codebreaking, and cryptanalysis – could be called intelligence warfare, with the Cold War even more so, as a war in which espionage or intelligence indeed substituted for or pre-empted military force to large extent.

 

 

 

 

(6) STRATEGY & TACTICS

 

In a nutshell, tactics win battles while strategy wins wars.

Yes, that omits the operational level of war which falls between them – “that connects the details of factics with the goals of strategy” – as I prefer the sharper duality of tactics and strategy without the more nebulous operational level between them.

And yes – strategy and tactics are fundamental elements or levels of war, rather than types of war as such, although I’d argue some wars are more strategic in nature while others are more tactical in nature, barely transcending the tactical level, if at all.

Hence, strategy and tactics earn their special mention entry for my types of war – indeed strategy and tactics could well be the subject of top tens lists of their own, or several top ten lists divided between defensive or offensive strategy and tactics. It’s apt that strategy and tactics – essentially out-thinking your enemy – follow after psychological warfare, but some may query they follow after espionage and intelligence, even as fundamental as the latter are for strategy and tactics. However, I’m going to go out on a limb with a hot take here and speculate that stategy and tactics evolved out of espionage and intelligence rather than the other way round. Prior to drilled infantry fighting in formation, my speculation is that prehistoric or the earliest historical warfare was not particularly strategic or tactical (outside of surprise through ambush or raid) but rather a matter of which combatant had the fiercest or strongest warriors – or probably most of all, the most warriors.

Strategy is not so much concerned with individual battles – indeed Sun Tzu famously propounded strategy or the art of war as winning without fighting – but understanding the nature of war, and above all, your purpose in waging it.

“Military tactics encompasses the art of organizing and employing fighting forces on or near the battlefield…the application of four battlefield functions which are closely related – kinetic or firepower, mobility, protection or security, and shock action.”

 

 

 

 

(7) MANEUVER & ATTRITION

 

Maneuver warfare is how we’d like wars to be, attrition warfare is how they are.

I’m joking and serious. Most works of military strategy, certainly that in classic texts such as the Art of War, boil down to aspirations to maneuver warfare, avoiding the pain and above all costs of attrition. The rule of cool in military history is on the side of maneuver, while attrition is distinctly unglamorous.

And yet maneuver warfare is the exception to the rule of attrition warfare. Yes, some military commanders and forces achieve it, but mostly it’s just an aspiration above attrition – an aspiration that is only occasionally or temporarily achieved, albeit more common in pre-modern history in which wars could be won by a key battle or battles.

Many of the circumstances of war or battles constrain the possibility of maneuver for the reality of attrition – terrain or fortification being prime examples, but the primary example is modern industrialization. As H.P. Willmott observed in his history of the Second World War, an industrial opponent is necessarily defeated only by attrition in depth – ironically, as at the same time industrialization provided the means for mechanized warfare as even more capability for maneuver.

Speaking of the Second World War, the world wars demonstrate both maneuver as the rule of cool in military history and attrition as its reality. Often, the demarcation between the two world wars in military history is that the Second World War is seen as the cool war of maneuver, while the First World War is the boring war of attrition. In reality, the Second World War was as much a war of attrition as the First or even more so, only somewhat more mobile (on occasion). For all their initial flashy success through maneuver, the Germans (and Japanese) ultimately (and inevitably) fought and lost by attrition.

It’s only apt that maneuver and attrition follow strategy and tactics, even if warfare is more clearly demarcated as maneuver or attrition warfare than it is for my proposed dichotomy between strategic and tactical warfare

“Maneuver warfare is a military philosophy that prioritizes rapid movement, psychological dislocation, and adaptability over brute force. Rather than systematically destroying every enemy unit, it seeks to exploit systemic weaknesses and shatter an adversary’s cohesion and will to fight.”

Obviously, that’s opposed to attrition warfare – “where traditional attrition warfare aims to physically grind down the enemy through sheer firepower, maneuver warfare aims to bypass strongholds and paralyze the enemy’s command structure.”

In other words – speed, surprise, and shock.

Speed and tempo are the key elements, not just for the mobility of your forces but also to degrade the ability of the opposing commanders or forces to react – “commanders strive to operate inside the enemy’s decision cycle”, aiding the psychological impact of “shock, confusion and panic”.

Focus on vulnerability is another key element – seeking to bypass enemy strength for “critical vulnerabilities such as supply lines, communication hubs, and leadership”.

Surprise and deception are still more key elements – ” using unpredictable movements, feints, and camouflage to keep the enemy disoriented.”

“Military forces typically execute maneuver warfare through five foundational tactical operations” – envelopment, turning movements, infiltration, penetration, and frontal attack while the other operations are executed.

“Historically, maneuver warfare was stressed by small militaries, more cohesive, better trained, or more technologically advanced than attrition warfare counterparts.”

Attrition warfare on the other hand is all about the grind. It’s in the name after all.

“Attrition warfare is a military strategy in which a belligerent attempts to wear down an enemy to the point of collapse through continuous losses in personnel and material. Victory is achieved not through swift, decisive maneuvers or capturing territory, but by out-producing and out-lasting the adversary’s ability to wage war.”

The enemy’s collapse can either be physical (through loss of forces or capacity) or psychological through breakdown of will or morale).

“These wars are defined by state industrial output, the geographical depth to absorb defeats, and the logistical capacity to constantly replace heavy equipment losses over time.”

Ironically, attrition warfare is fought as much or even more by the weak as it is by the strong – “a combatant facing a significant disadvantage may deliberately adopt an attritional approach to offset the enemy’s superior firepower, mobility, or resources.”  Guerilla warfare is the archetype of attritional warfare fought by the weak against the strong.

 

 

 

 

(8) LOGISTICS & SUPPLY

 

“Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics”.

A quotation variously attributed to different military commanders, usually WW2 US Army General Omar Bradley although the definitive verifiable record of such a statement was by US Marine Corps General Robert Barrow in 1980. In fairness, the US Marine Corps lives by logistics.

However, the truth of it remains – all wars, except for the most prehistoric warfare, are wars of logistics and supply. And the only reason the most prehistoric warfare is an exception, despite prehistoric warriors needing food and water like everyone else, is that the whole nature of prehistoric warfare is that it did not keep warriors in the field for any appreciable length of time, hence they were essentially self-supplying, carrying or providing for themselves what little they needed for short periods of time.

“An army marches on its stomach”

Logistics and supply are the lifeblood of military forces in the field (or at sea or in the air) – the proverbial stomach on which armies march, including at the literal or most basic level of being fed, or the proverbial tail of “tooth-to-tail ratio” as requirements of supply and support for combat forces. Needless to say, the tail tends to be longer than the tooth, particularly for modern military forces, but vividly represented by the wagon trains that followed after pre-modern armies, often longer than the army itself. Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is arguably most notable for the way it bemoans the running costs of armies.

That is not to say that logistics and supply or supply lines win wars of themselves, but they can certainly lose them – as can counter-logistics to deprive enemy forces of supplies or supply lines, such as the scorched earth strategy famed for that purpose.

“Logistics is an enabler of military operations, not an end in itself. Poor logistics can result in defeat, but even the best logistics cannot guarantee victory. Conversely, the best possible logistics is not always required: fit for purpose can suffice.”

There are three basic means of supply – obtaining supplies in the field, carrying supplies with the army, and shipping supplies from the rear. While the first two are essentially self-supplying to some degree, they still often involved prodigious costs and organization, particularly as only so much of what an army needs can be reliably obtained in the field. The Roman Empire’s most impressive military achievements were perhaps not so much in combat but in its systematic logistics and supply, as represented by its road.

“Obtaining supplies in the field and carrying supplies with the army remained the primary means of supply until the 19th century…Starting with the Industrial Revolution, new technological, technical and administrative advances permitted supplies to be transported at speeds and over distances never before possible. At the same time, increased demands for ammunition, and the heavier weight of shells and bombs made it more difficult for armies to carry their requirements, and they soon became dependent on regular replenishment of ammunition from depots. Mechanisation, with motor vehicles replacing animals, created a demand for fuel and spare parts, neither of which could be obtained locally. This led to a “logistical revolution” which began in the 20th century and drastically improved the capabilities of modern armies while making them highly dependent on this method.”

 

A-TIER (TOP TIER)

 

 

 

(9) ECONOMIC WARFARE

 

“War is a racket.”

Booty, loot, spoils, plunder, pillaging and sacking – not to mention piracy and slavery. And for when you can’t take it with you or just want to weaken your enemy, there’s laying waste, salting the earth or scorched earth, ravaging, razing, and general devastation or destruction. While vandalism has come to mean the latter, its historical origin in the name of the Vandals was more the despoilation of the former.

All warfare is economic warfare.

Well, not quite but close. Warfare consistently has had economic resources or targets as motive or means of waging war, albeit not universally.

That goes all the way back to its origins in prehistoric warfare, where the economic resources as motive for war were as rudimentary as hunting grounds or foraging territory.

From agriculture onwards, the economic motives of war became more concrete and durable for occupation, storage or transit – from grain to gold and everything in between, as well as the land from which economic resources were grown or mined. Humans themselves became economic resources through slavery of captives (although if more contemporary tribal warfare is any guide, prehistoric warfare often involved women as captives).

Logistics and supply lead naturally to the subject of economic warfare, which in pre-modern history was predominantly looting or sacking. Indeed, prior to the rapid growth of productivity in modern history, most windfalls of economic growth in history seem to be from population growth, trade in luxuries – and above all, from military conquest and warfare.

In short, whether war has been a racket, it certainly has been robbery on a grand scale throughout history – or vandalism on an equally grand scale.

Or piracy if you prefer – while pirates are usually seen on the opposing side to states in history, there are states that have effectively been pirates or deployed piracy (or privateers) as a means of war. Perhaps the most famous example of the latter is the piracy of other European states, most notably the English, on Spanish shipping from the Americas – although attacks on shipping, most notably by submarines, has been a feature of modern warfare, albeit to sink rather than sack the ships and their cargoes.

Yes, we tend to think of economic warfare as the modern use of economic means of state power as a substitute for military force – soft power rather than hard power – but economic warfare has been used in tandem with military force to weaken enemy states for thousand years, even by such basic (and classic) means as “ravaging the crops of the enemy”.

However, the same modern developments in trade and industry that have seen wars become comparatively less lucrative as a means for economic motives – as well as more costly – have also lent themselves to greater sophistication and effect for economic policies or warfare separately from military force.

“Policies and measures in economic warfare may include blockade, blacklisting, preclusive purchasing, rewards and the capturing or the control of enemy assets or supply lines. Other policies may include tariff discrimination, sanctions, the suspension of aid, the freezing of capital assets, the prohibition of investment and other capital flows, expropriation, and debasing the target’s currency by counterfeiting”.

 

 

 

 

(10) INDUSTRIAL WARFARE & TOTAL WAR

 

“Say hello to Ford, and General F…g Motors…You have horses! What were you thinking?”

War in mass – mass conscription, mass mobilization, mass production. Home front and total war.

Economic warfare segues nicely into industrial warfare, the type of warfare that can only be fought by industrialized economies “capable of creating and equipping large armies, navies, and air forces”.

Industrial warfare includes the technology of rapid transport and communication, mechanization and motorization, small arms and machine guns capable of rapid rates of fire, high velocity artillery, mechanized naval warfare, armored warfare, and aerial warfare.

Industrial warfare is virtually synonymous with the concepts of total war and the home front – “where a society’s entire economy, population, and infrastructure are considered part of the war effort…blurring the line between military and civilian”.

Apparently, “the term was coined during World War I by Erich Ludendorff” and it became coupled with “waging warfare with absolute ruthlessness”, including “the reintroduction of civilians and civilian infrastructure as targets in destroying the enemy’s ability to engage in war”. Not coincidentally, it also became coupled with unrestricted warfare – “”unrestricted in terms of the weapons used, the territory or combatants involved, or the objectives pursued, especially one in which the laws of war are disregarded”.

 

 

 

(11) GROUND WARFARE

 

Yes, all warfare except naval and air warfare is ground or land warfare – and even those two overlap with ground warfare in things such as amphibious or airborne warfare.

This special mention is for ground or land warfare by terrain and weather conditions, which both are, and are not, surprisingly diverse.

Not surprisingly diverse – as observed by John Keegan in an interlude chapter on the limitations of war-making in his history of warfare, war on land tends to have the same default terrain and weather conditions, avoiding difficulties of both.

Surprisingly diverse – because you can’t always pick your battles or where you fight them, such that there are some distinctive or specialized types of warfare within ground of land warfare in general.

Perhaps not quite enough for a top ten of ground warfare, but at least enough for six distinctive types of warfare (although I think arguments can be made for airborne and amphibious warfare as types of groundwarfare, at least in part, with island warfare within the latter, as well as wet-weather wrfare as its own distinct type of ground warfare):

• (1) Urban warfare as featured in my top ten entry of siege and urban warfare
• (2) Desert warfare – which I suspect might be the next most common after siege and urban warfare (at least on a large scale), because of the Middle East (going all the way back to the ancient Near East)
• (3) Jungle warfare
• (4) Mountain warfare, often overlapping with…
• (5) Cold-weather, winter or arctic warfare, including ski warfare.
• (6) Subterranean warfare – or in other words, my next special mention entry…

 

 

 

 

 

(12) TRENCH & TUNNEL WARFARE

 

I quipped about trench warfare as a subterranean form of land warfare but that’s taking its subterranean elements too far – it is more akin to a form of fortification and the siege warfare from which it originated.

While it has those predecessors in pre-modern warfare, it particularly arose from the firepower in modern warfare, with the increased rate of fire in small arms, firstly breech-loading firearms and secondly machine guns, and the increased power of artillery.

“Trench warfare is a combat strategy where opposing armies fight from fortified, dug-in networks of trenches to seek cover from heavy firepower and artillery. It typically emerges when defensive weaponry—such as machine guns and automated artillery—outpaces mobility, often resulting in a prolonged, grinding stalemate or war of attrition.”

The archetype of trench warfare is of course famously the Western Front in the First World War, although increasing modern firepower saw it occur from the Crimean War and American Civil War onwards.

Ironically, the First World War saw both its famous archetype and its decline.

“The development of armored warfare and combined arms tactics permitted static lines to be bypassed and defeated, leading to the decline of trench warfare after the war. Following World War I, trench warfare became a byword for stalemate, attrition, sieges and futility in conflict.”

However, trench warfare has recurred in subsequent conflicts “where technological parity or drone threats restrict rapid troop movement, as seen in the Russia-Ukraine War”.

Tunnel warfare on the other hand is subterranean warfare, albeit overlapping with the semi-subterranean warfare of trench warfare, and it goes, well, deep into history, back to the Bronze Age “with recorded uses by the Assyrians”.

“Historically, besieging forces employed sappers to dig tunnels beneath a fortress wall, collapsing the tunnel to bring the wall down. Defenders would counter by digging their own tunnels to intercept the invaders in brutal hand-to-hand combat beneath the surface”.

A fascinating example of ancient subterranean or tunnel warfare is in the Roman-Persian Wars, with “well-preserved evidence of mining and counter-mining operations…unearthed at the fortress of Dura-Europos, which fell to the Sassanians in 256/7 AD”. From what I’ve seen or read of it, it looks literally hellish – not only hand-to-hand combat in cramped and suffocating conditions underground, but also at risk of accidental or deliberate collapse as well as burning sulphur and pitch to create poisonous gas.

If anything, it has been more commonly used in modern warfare – “a military strategy involving combat conducted underground, typically utilizing dug networks, natural caves, or existing urban infrastructure”, used to “bypass surface gridlocks, escape aerial bombardment, and neutralize the technological advantages of more powerful armies”. The focus of the latter two involves force protection but it’s also used for infiltration (as at Dura-Europos in the Roman-Persian Wars), logistics hubs, and tactical deflection. Perhaps the most famous use of tunnel warfare in modern warfare was in the Vietnam War.

“It includes the construction of underground facilities in order to attack or defend, and the use of existing natural caves and artificial underground facilities for military purposes. Tunnels can be used to undermine fortifications and slip into enemy territory for a surprise attack, while it can strengthen a defense by creating the possibility of ambush, counterattack and the ability to transfer troops from one portion of the battleground to another unseen and protected. Tunnels can serve as shelter from enemy attack…Tunnels are narrow and restrict fields of fire; thus, troops in a tunnel usually have only a few areas exposed to fire or sight at any one time.”

 

 

 

(13) CHEMICAL WARFARE

 

“You’re poison running through my veins”

That’s right. Chemical warfare is basically just poison. Well, even more so than the song by Alice Cooper.

Nerve agents, blister agents or vesicants, blood agents or asphyxiants, and choking or pulmonary agents

Yes, chemical warfare uses different types of poison, generally categorized by their effects on the human body, by different means of delivery, but still poison nonetheless.

“Chemical warfare (CW) involves using the toxic properties of chemical substances as weapons”.

It is distinct from radiological warfare or the radioactive effects and fallout of nuclear warfare. While it can include the “use of non-living toxic products produced by living organisms (toxins such as botulinum toxin, ricin, and saxitoxin)”, the “offensive use of living organisms” as weapons is also another type of warfare (in the very next special mention entry).

The use of poisons in warfare or as weapons goes all the way back to ancient history – and indeed prehistory, if the use of poisons by contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes is any guide. (The example that always comes to mind are the poison dart frogs named for their use as a source of poison for darts or arrows by native American tribes in Central and South America).

However, it was modern industrialization that provided the basis in production and delivery for chemical warfare on a substantial rather than sporadic scale – with the use of poison gas in First World War as the archetype and apogee of chemical warfare (unless you count the H0l0caust which remains the deadliest use of poison gas), such that it is only fitting chemical warfare follows after trench and tunnel warfare.

Apogee, that is, because our visceral horror in reaction to chemical warfare is arguably exceeded only by that of the next entry, or the existential horror of nuclear war. Hence, the taboo against it (similar to the taboo against those other two forms of warfare) as well as the prohibition of it by international law, with the former helping to uphold the latter despite intermittent chemical warfare since WW1.

 

 

 

 

(14) BIOLOGICAL WARFARE

 

War by disease or pestilence. Germ warfare – using biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, insects, and fungi.

War is so often accompanied by disease or pestilence in its wake that they join each other along with famine and death as the proverbial Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – proverbial, that is, because the original Biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were conquest, war, famine, and death (but conquest seemed too much like doubling up with war so pestilence was substituted or proposed for the original image).

Biological warfare takes that to the next level – as war waged by pestilence or disease.

Yes, biological warfare is that “offensive use of living organisms” as weapons that I pre-empted in my previous entry for chemical warfare (and distinguishing chemical warfare’s use of the toxic properties of non-living chemical substances, albeit including those produced by living organisms such as botulinum toxin, risin, and saxitoxin).

Or in other words, disease as a weapon – the use of bacteria (sometimes distinguished as bacteriological warfare), viruses, insects (sometimes distinguished as entomological warfare), and fungi (disappointingly not distinguished as mycowarfare) “with the intent to kill, harm, or incapacitate humans, animals, or plants as an act of war”.

And yes, it evokes our visceral horror in reaction to it arguably exceeding that to chemical warfare – and depending just how pandemic it is, arguably rivalling the existential horror of nuclear war. Hence the taboo against it helping to uphold the prohibition of it by international law – that has seen the modern use of biological warfare to be more hypothetical or rarer than chemical warfare, and even nuclear warfare for deployment and testing.

Of course, it helps for the taboo against and prohibition of it that biological warfare has a similar logic of mutually assured destruction as nuclear war, hence the similar existential horror (and visceral horror more than chemical warfare). However, that might change with genetic engineering, which potentially might allow for more targeted biological warfare.

There is some rudimentary use of biological warfare in history, going all the way back to the Bronze Age – the Hittites driving plague victims into enemy territory, the Assyrians poisoning wells with ergot, the use of excrement or cadavers to cause or spread infection.

Perhaps the most famous historical examples are the Mongols catapulting the bodies of those who died from Black Plague into the Crimean city of Kaffa they were besieging, or the use of blankets to spread smallpox to native Americans – although in both cases, it is debated the extent to which this actually spread the disease as opposed to other vectors.

However, it was only with modern science, not least germ theory, that biological warfare became a matter more of design than chance – while at the same time, our greater visceral and existential horror in reaction to it.

 

 

 

 

(15) ELECTRONIC WARFARE & CYBERWARFARE

 

Electronic warfare – evocatively defined as “warfare involving the use of the electromagnetic spectrum” or “directed energy to control the spectrum, attack an enemy, or impede enemy operations”.

In other words – intercepting, jamming or targeting modern communication, radar, “or other military or civilian assets” such as electronic guidance systems for drones, missiles or planes. Or the less destructive way of “sending them back to the Stone Age”.

Interestingly, electronic warfare dates back further than you’d think, albeit still at the dawn of the twentieth century – with Morse code in the Boer War, followed closely by radio interception or jamming elsewhere, including in the Russo-Japanese War. Churchill colorfully called the electronic warfare of WW2 as the “Battle of the Beams”.

Cyberwarfare on the other hand is the use of cyberattacks or the various means of “technological force within computer networks” against an enemy state, “causing comparable harm to traditional warfare” – “espionage, sabotage, propaganda, manipulation, and economic warfare” – or deploying defensive measures against the former.

In other words – essentially war by hacking (and counter-hacking).

 

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

 

 

 

 

(16) SPACE WARFARE

 

Less Star Wars, more Sputnik – that is, space warfare is more about ballistic missiles and satellites, for now at least.

And yes, Star Wars is essentially WW2 dogfights, bomber runs, and naval battles in space, where they wouldn’t work or make no sense as depicted.

But seriously, while we tend to think of space warfare as SF “space opera” battles between spaceships, we’ve been fighting space warfare in various degrees since WW2, just in more mundane forms (to the extent that you count ballistic missiles and satellites as mundane).

While the usual flightpath of German V-2 rockets to their targets in WW2 was not through space, they could on vertical launch traverse the edge of space when that was defined as 100 kilometers – hence the vertical launch of V-2 rocket MW18014 on 20 June 1944 retroactively became the first artificial object to travel into space by that definition.

After that, ballistic missiles have routinely had flight paths which transit the upper atmosphere or space. As such, nuclear warfare is space warfare, at least as represented by ballistic missiles, so not surprisingly defensive measures for nuclear warfare have also been planned to operate in space – most famously the Strategic Defense Initiative or SDI by the US, dubbed Star Wars.

However, ballistic missiles used in combat with conventional warheads have also operated in space, mostly in conflicts in the Middle East, along with the defensive measures against them. “In November 2023, Israel claimed an interception of a Houthi ballistic missile as the the first combat in space”.

It’s in the deployment of (or against) satellites, originating in the Cold War, that space warfare really comes into its own.

“The Cold War prompted the start of the militarization of space. Military satellites have been launched since the later 1950s for communications, navigation, reconnaissance, and munitions guidance. The Gulf War is sometimes called the “first space war” because of the use of these capabilities by the US.”

Intriguingly (to me at least), space warfare is occasionally broken down into components of ground-to-space warfare (such as targeting satellites from Earth), space-to-space warfare (such as satellites targeting other satellites), and space-to-ground warfare (such as satellites attacking targets on Earth).

Even more intriguingly, there is ground-to-space warfare that involves weapons capable of being deployed by a single soldier for satellites or other targets in space – with the amusing acronym of MANPASTA. I’m feeling the urge to take out the International Space Station with one of those babies – it blocks my view of Venus.

There have even been nukes in space, although international treaties prohibit the permanent basing of weapons of mass destruction in space or the military use of celestial bodies – but do not prohibit the military use of orbital space or military space spaces. I suppose there goes my dreams of moon buggy battles (or where opposing forces lob asteroids at each other). However, back to the nukes, “the US and Soviet Union carried out nine nuclear explosions in space from 1958 to 1962, which damaged satellites”.

Even without nuclear weapons in space, the logic of mutually assured destruction in space – as the accumulation or creation of space debris can endanger your own satellites or spacecraft, particularly in the scenario of Kessler Syndrome in which we effectively paint ourselves into a planetary corner with our own space junk. It’s a pity that the term, coined at almost the same time as the first Star Wars film, was not adapted by the latter – it would have put a whole new spin on it as the Kessler Run instead of the Kessel Run.

 

 

 

(17) PHARMACOLOGICAL WARFARE

 

Sadly not a special mention entry for the psychedelic warfare in Barefoot in the Head, the classic SF novel by Brian Aldiss where a drugged out post-apocalyptic Europe is devastated by the Acid Head Wars, in which hallucinogenic “psycho-chemical” aerosols were the primary weapon.

I suppose that would be a form of ehemical warfare, only a lot more fun.

Instead, this is a special mention entry for my fascination with the interconnection between drugs and war, as also reflected in my corresponding special mention (to my top ten wars) for the Opium Wars. The Opium Wars are the closest thing to a war fought over drugs like the modern stereotype of wars fought for oil – in this case, a war fought over Britain smuggling opium into China. Beyond that, it is fascinating to think how much of European colonialism (and slavery) was born from the plantation production of drugs – tobacco, coffee and tea. Even more so if you count sugar as a drug.

Of course, modern drug smugglers or cartels tend not to have the force of the world’s largest maritime empire behind them, but often play a role in more low-level war or insurgency as in Colombia. And notoriously, drug smuggling – particularly in cocaine and opium – has often laid beneath the surface of larger modern conflicts, particularly for financing them.

There is also the use of drugs in war. I’ve read that narcotics have been as much a part of war as bullets and bombs. While that appears to be an overstatement, historically drug use was often sanctioned and encouraged by militaries including alcohol and tobacco in troop rations. Of course, alcohol is something of a law of diminishing returns – what it adds in ‘Dutch courage’, it can often take away in effectiveness, famously as in the Russo-Japanese War on the Russian side.

Germany was also notorious for drug use in the Second World War, notably for amphetamine use by its armed forces, but also drug use by its leadership. However, stimulants such as cocaine and amphetamine were widely used by belligerents in both World Wars to increase alertness and suppress appetite. Drug use was also notorious in American forces in Vietnam – and has been a feature of other conflicts

And then you have the more trippy use of drugs – the Viking berserkers possibly as a result of agaric “magic” mushrooms, the Assassins named for hashish, even MK-Ultra by the CIA in the Cold War.

 

 

 

 

(18) CULTURE WAR & MEMETIC WARFARE

 

Metaphorical war essentially along the lines of psychological warfare, but with cultural or social conflict substituted for military conflict – as such, it can be wide-ranging (as in virtually anything can be culture war) as well as the subject of controversy.

Typically, it is portrayed more in terms of civil warfare within nations, although often as occurring in a similar form across nations (such as the West in general), usually by design. Not coincidentally, culture war is often reported as involving or at least alleging disinformation by foreign agents or other nations, consistent with psychological warfare for other conflicts involving those agents or nations.

It has come to particular prominence with the internet, especially with memes – hence my term memetic warfare, in turn often adapted or used in memes, for example online declarations of being veterans of meme war.

However, culture war as a term has a surprisingly long history of usage – surprising to me at least, looking up the use of the term, which apparently dated back to the Kulturkampf or cultural struggle in 1871-1878 between the Prussian state and Catholic Church in Germany. The term has then been adapted from the twentieth century onwards, in the United States and elsewhere.

 

 

 

 

 

(19) ANIMAL WARFARE

 

All warfare is animal warfare, as humans are animals after all.

But seriously, with animal warfare we come full circle to prehistoric or primal warfare, the origins of war itself. It is commonly argued that human warfare is fundamentally different from other animal intra-species violence. I’m not so sure, as this argument is persuasively challenged by Azar Gat’s War in Human Civilization among others – Edward O Wilson memorably wrote in his book On Human Nature “I suspect that if hamadryas baboons had nuclear weapons, they would destroy the world in a week.”

So, one theme for animal warfare is intra-species violence among animals approximating human warfare, or at least organized, territorial conflicts. As Wilson continued from the above quote – “and alongside ants, which conduct assassinations, skirmishes, and pitched battles as routine business, men are all but tranquilized pacifists.”

One of the most famous examples of animal warfare, perhaps not surprisingly fought by our closest living relatives, was the Gombe Chimpanzee War, in which one band of chimpanzees systematically  targeted the males of another band, wiping out that other band in a period of over four years. This wasn’t an isolated event either – at least one subsequent chimpanzee war has been observed, with the Ngogo Chimpanzee War.

Another theme for animal warfare is the military forces of humanity being humbled by the forces of nature in historical wars, such as weather, which has swept away what have otherwise seemed overwhelming military forces, particularly in war at sea. It also applies to terrain – John Keegan in A History of Warfare noted how terrain (and climate) has been a limiting factor in wars throughout history, such that the majority of battles occur in surprisingly small or narrow territories on a global scale.

Occasionally, those forces of nature have included animals – with two of the most famous occurring in the Second World War, although unfortunately both are somewhat inflated and one almost so apocryphal as to be urban legend. The first involved sharks preying on the sailors from the cruiser Indianapolis when it was sunk by Japanese submarine in July 1945, made famous by iconic narration of it in the film Jaws.

The other involved crocodiles preying on Japanese soldiers trapped in mangroves by the British in the Battle of Ramree Island in Burma from January 1945 to February 1945. At one stage, they were reported to have killed all but twenty of a thousand Japanese soldiers, but sadly for fans of crocodile horror such as myself, this has been discounted to almost the reverse – at most they killed up to twenty soldiers, although they may also have scavenged on the bodies of Japanese soldiers killed by other causes.

Of course, in my special mention for biological warfare, I’ve already featured the true unsung champions of animal destruction of human forces at war – insect vectors and the diseases they carry, which have been as effective hostile weather in wiping out whole armies and even more effective in wiping out whole populations.

You have the theme of humanity’s use of animals in or for war or military operations. Of course, the horse is standout here as featured in my entry for cavalry warfare, but war has seen a whole range of animals used in it – from more commonplace ones such as elephants, camels, donkeys or mules, oxen or cattle, dogs and pigeons, to more exotic animals such as pigs, moose, rats, dolphins, sea lions and others.

And then you get to the truly bizarre, such as entomological warfare or animal-borne bombs – with my personal favorite example of the latter being the American bat bomb project against the Japanese, taking my quip that the Americans fight wars like Batman to a literal extreme

To that you can add wars named for animals, of which there are a surprising number, albeit including non-military conflicts such as the Cod Wars over fishing between the United Kingdom and Iceland, or border conflicts or near-war situations such as the Crab Wars or Pig War – with perhaps the Beaver Wars being the most intense actual wars named for animals.

 

 

 

(20) S€XUAL WARFARE

 

I like to reserve my final or twentieth special mention for a light-hearted kinky entry, but sadly despite the name of this entry there’s nothing light-hearted or kinky about its primary connotation.

That connotation, including slavery or trafficking, has a history or indeed prehistory as long as warfare itself, despite being the aspect of war we find most viscerally disturbing in the modern period and have hence defined as a war crime.

Outside that connotation, it is perhaps not surprising that two professions proverbially described as the oldest, pr0stitute and soldier, should go hand in hand – often literally. The proverbial oldest profession has often been foremost among the “camp followers” of armed forces, putting another metaphorical tail in tooth to tail ratio. Of course, when military forces seek to enforce that camp following, then it takes us right back to that connotation defined as war crime.

Beyond that, there are the liaisons between civilian populations and military forces throughout history, perhaps best encapsulated by British description for American servicemen in their country during WW2 – “overpaid, overs€xed, and over here”. Australians expressed similar sentiments. The Japanese played upon something similar for propaganda pamphlets it spread to Americans in the Pacific War – what the wives of American servicemen were getting up to with civilian males back home. Amusingly, American servicemen collected these pamphlets with enthusiasm.

Finally, the term might be used for the metaphorical Battle of the S€xes – the cultural and social conflict between men and women throughout history, but particularly in the modern period that gave us the phrase.