What technologies or ideas rewrote the book of war?

G

godofthunder9010

Active member
Exactly what it says. What are the big leaps of human invention that completely changed the way we fight wars? A few obvious ones for starters:
The stirrup
The bow
 
That's the idea of course. Interesting topic of discussion of course. Tell what and why, etc.

The bow (and other ranged weapons) made it possible to fight without being in direct contact with the opponent.

The stirrup vastly improved Cavalry and made it much easier to stay on a horse while holding a sword or shield or bow. Cavalrymen could use the stirrups as extra leverage to hit harder and make their blows effective.
 
Interesting fact:

The crossbow has killed more people than any other weapon in history and is the only weaon in histoy to have been condemned by the Vatican, not even nukes were condemned. They reason? It was not honorable, it allowed an ordinary man the ability to kill an enemy from a great distance with little or no training.
 
The chariot used by the Hittites was probably the most revolutionary as it was the first attempt at mobile warfare. They were kicking Egypts behind badly until the Egyptians got their own chariots.
 
I'd have to say that the caraval was a mojor turning point in naval history as it allowed navies, Such as Great Britain and Spain, to be made effective in a wider variety of weather and winds
 
When the French Revolution introduced the concept of Mass Armies and conscription, the days of war being dominated by strictly professional warriors was greatly diminished.
 
I think the biggest innovation to warfare that helped and killed more soldiers would have to be one that wasn't even a weapon. SANITATION. Next to that, I would have to say the intentional spreading of the PLAGUE.(It destroyed Athens, and the Mongol Army.)
 
He does have a good point. Battlefield medicine and sanitation prevented diseases from wiping out armies. I know it happened on many occasoins in the past where two armies going at each other never even got to meet to have a proper fight because their units were getting decimated by disease.
This was best highlighted though, in the Navy.
Confined to cramped, dirty quarters, and with clothes washed in salt water, it was a bucket of disease. A ship going to sea could come back anywhere between 30-60% of its crew decimated by disease.
 
Right, but I don't remember ever running into anything about the Mongol armies being decimated by some Plague or another, so now I want to know more.

Interesting stat: Influenza outbreak that started near the end of WW1 killed approximately 30 million people, significantly more than died in the war itself.
 
I beg to differ about conscription being key, while it is important it can also be a plague and a burden to heavy for many armies and countries. The US uses a smaller military that is arguably the best trained in the world (When I say arguably I really mean that we barely nudge out the UK, Russia, Germany, and France for the best trained.) where as other countries, most notable the Soviet Union, were over burdened by the costs of conscription and it eventually resulted in the collapse of that country. (While other factors were also involved with the demise of the USSR I personally feel that to high of military costs were to blame, you can not spend that much money on the military in a true communist system, if anything they should spend no money, since most of the money would need to go to social welfare programs which also over burden the system and encourage people to be lazy, not meeting their true potential.) Israel however is a prime example of a successful draft (some of you may be getting sick of me saying this, well to bad.) they are always under constant threat of invasion and need to keep a large army on hand to thwart any invasion, sometimes that requires them to go on the offensive, their are 7 arab countries, only one Jewish state, the Arabs can take a hit and keep going, the Israelites on the other hand have nowhere to fall back to, except the US as many of the neo-Nazis will tell you.
 
The first weapon.....Hunger
The second.....Lust
The Third.....Bewilderment
The Fourth.....Fear
The Firth.....Teeth
The Sixth..... Anger
The Seventh .....Reason
The Eight..... The Strategem
The Ninth ..... Strategy
The Tenth..... Analysis
The Eleventh ..... Introspection
The Twelfth..... Ideology

I would of used the senses for number one, but life appears to be incapable of exsisting without a certain degree of sensing it's enviroment, even if it's alge communicating with it's organelle's...... conflict without and object capable of adapting as a result of the senses is a purely non-organic phenomena and though may posses many of the sam characteristics of warfare, is not in my belief worthy of it's title.
 
Although its relevance died with its recipe, Greek Fire drastically altered warfare for hundreds of years, both on the land and on the sea.

Missiles of all varieties has impacted almost every field of warfare. Ship to ship, air to air, tank to tank even. Artillery uses it. Cruise missiles have proved their effectiveness. Balistic missiles from the small guys all the way up to the big bad ICBM systems.
 
The Musket and the hand held machine-gun. The musket because everyones perception of warfare had to change there and then and the machine-gun because tactics also changed completely, like the trenches in WWI would not have been half so bad if machine-guns didnt exist.
 
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