Digital Soldiers: The Evolution of High-Tech Weaponry and Tomorrow's Brave New Battlefeld - Softcover

Dunnigan, James F.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312182392 ISBN 13: 9780312182397

Verlag: St Martin's Press, 1998

Inhaltsangabe

A military advisor presents a history of weapons from ancient history to the present and posits that the Pentagon's present preoccupation with high-tech weapons is weakening America's military might

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Digital Soldiers

PART I

Preliminaries

1

From Rocks to Electrons

YOU HEAR THEM all the time, blurbs or sound bites on how nifty modern military equipment is and how, if it is unleashed, some situation or another will be made right. This is an easy angle to fall for, as the twentieth century has been one of increasingly numerous and complex weapons. Why, they are no longer merely weapons, but "weapons systems." There is a method to all this hype, but not the one you might imagine. For high tech does not always mean high performance, or even minimal effectiveness. Remember that, because it only gets worse when you take a closer look

What is happening today with high-tech weapons is unique. Never before in history has there been a period where there were so many new weapons in such a short period of time. But there have, obviously, been new weapons over the centuries. For as long as there has been warfare, there have been new weapons. But until the 1800s, the new weapons were slow in coming. Really new weapons or items of military equipment were quite rare. Centuries would go by before anything particularly novel came along. And even then, the tradition-minded fighting man was usually reluctant to adopt the new technology until (and usually because) someone else used it. There were only a handful of technological breakthroughs until about eight hundred years ago, when gunpowder weapons began to appear. Then came a deluge of technology in this century.

Before looking into the avalanche of twentieth-century weapons, it's important to look back at how new weapons were developed in the past. Many of the conditions that have driven, or inhibited, weapons development in the past are still with us. You will better understand the present, and the future, if you have some knowledge of the past.

Weapons Development: The Stone Age

THE FIRST WEAPONS were rocks and clubs. Rocks were chipped to create primitive knives. Then came spears, using stone (flint, usually) heads. Bows were a major advance, using flint-tipped arrows. The sling and clubs fitted with flint were other prehistoric advances in weapons technology. Eventually there was bronze, which came along about six thousand years ago. This metal was an alloy of copper (by itself too soft for effective weapons) and tin. It was a major technological advance, and was propelled into wide use as much because of bronze weapons as for the economic advantages of bronze tools. Even that long ago, warfare gave a boost to technological advances. While bronze had obvious advantages over copper for hunting, food preparation, and construction, it was the fear of "losing the bronze race" that motivated tribes to find out how to make bronze and make a lot of it before warlike neighbors paid an unfriendly visit to show them what the new bronze weapons could do to someone still using copper.

Another such breakthrough didn't take place until some fifteen hundred years later, when iron was discovered. A much harder metal than bronze, its use gave soldiers a significant advantage over bronze-equipped opponents. The "iron race" went on for a century or two in the Middle East until everyone had it. Those that were slow in adopting the new metal were either wiped out or absorbed by iron-outfitted kingdoms. The new metal was not only useful for weapons, but led to the development of many new kinds of armor. Iron weapons dominated the battlefield for over three thousand years. Some seven hundred years ago, gunpowder weapons began to appear, but it wasn't until three hundred years ago that gunpowder displaced iron swords and spears as the primary weapon in most armies.

Military Innovations of the Ancients

JUST BECAUSE IT took so long to get from the discovery of iron to the introduction of gunpowder does not mean that three thousand years went by with little innovation in weapons. There were quite a few new ideas involving missile weapons. Then, as now, missiles were seen as the wave of the future. They were also seen, then as now, as a less dangerous way to attack an opponent. Ancient missiles were usually arrows, or large rocks thrown at fortifications by catapults and similar machines. Several new types of bows were developed during the golden age of iron weapons. Some involved the use of some iron, like the crossbow. Others used no metal at all, like the compound bow favored by the Mongols, or the longbow used by the English yeoman archers in themedieval period. While the bows often used no iron, the arrows did. Later crossbows used an iron bolt, rather than a specially designed wood arrow, and eventually the bow itself had iron parts. All arrows had an iron head, and these varied greatly in their design. One of the more interesting of these is the bodkin arrowhead used by English longbows; it was particularly effective penetrating armor.

There were many other developments during the military Iron Age, but these were tactical and administrative innovations. Some of these were very important. For example, about 2,200 years ago, the Parthians (Iranians living in the Iraq-Iran area) developed full suits of armor for mounted spearmen. They also had mounted archers. The term Parthian shot refers to their technique of riding away from an approaching enemy and turning around in the saddle to let off an arrow or two. This organization was almost identical to what the Mongols used 1,500 years later, and similar to the mounted knight developed in western Europe 1,000 years later. The Parthians didn't have the stirrup yet--that came a few centuries later. But they did have the heavy (armored) cavalry that dominated the battlefield for the next 2,000 years. The stirrup helped the later knights stay in the saddle, but the lack of same did not make the Parthian knights that much less effective. Besides, the stirrup was invented by the Chinese to make it easier to get on a horse, not just to make it easier to stay in the saddle. Special saddles had long been used to aid in staying astride the horse.

Another example of innovation during this period was the use of heavy infantry. Originally, infantry tactics had been nothing more than a mass (or mob, depending on the quality of leadership) of stout fellows armed with spears and swords. Most carried shields of metal, wood, hide, or woven material (or combinations thereof) and armor of similar construction to the shield. At various times, armies really got their act together and equipped all the troops with excellent armor and trained them thoroughly. This was more difficult than it sounds, as professional armies were, until a few centuries ago, rather rare. They were too expensive, and enthusiastic amateurs were a lot cheaper and nearly as good as most pros. In such situations, if the amateurs outnumbered the pros by, say, two to one, the amateurs usually won.

But when someone came along and managed to finance a well-trained and -equipped professional army, this was unique and the result was usually a long string of conquests followed by the establishment of yet another empire. Most commonly, these conquering armies were primarily infantry. Horses were expensive to maintain, and their quality was poor, so most professional troops walked. The mounted soldiers were usually nobles who only turned out for an emergency or when the prospects of loot were particularly good. The Assyrians,Greeks, and Romans (to mention the more successful ones) all established large empires with professional infantry armies using unique organization, tactics, and lots of training.

Ancient Inhibitions

YOU WOULD THINK that people would have picked up on the importance of training and attention to tactics. But such was not, and still is not, the case. The reasons for this lapse are rather easy to...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: St Martin's Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1998
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0312182392
• ISBN 13: 9780312182397
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 309
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: KreGa Onlinehandel GmbH; 4950000000000; info@krega-onlinehandel.de; ; Birkenweg 31; Brakel; 33034; Deutschland