Industrial warfare
Industrial warfare is a period in the history of warfare ranging roughly from the early 19th century and the start of the Industrial Revolution to the beginning of the Atomic Age, which saw the rise of nation-states, capable of creating and equipping large armies, navies, and air forces, through the process of industrialization.
The era featured mass-conscripted armies, rapid transportation, telegraph and wireless communications, and the concept of total war. In terms of technology, this era saw the rise of rifled breech-loading infantry weapons capable of high rates of fire, high-velocity breech-loading artillery, chemical weapons, armoured warfare, metal warships, submarines, and aircraft.
Total war
One of the main features of industrial warfare is the concept of "total war". The term was coined during World War I by Erich Ludendorff, which called for the complete mobilization and subordination of all resources, including policy and social systems, to the German war effort. It has also come to mean waging warfare with absolute ruthlessness, and its most identifiable legacy today has been the reintroduction of civilians and civilian infrastructure as targets in destroying the enemy's ability to engage in war.There are several reasons for the rise of total warfare in the 19th century. The main one is industrialization. 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 material.
The earliest modern example of total war was the American Civil War. Union generals Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman were convinced that, if the North was to be victorious, the Confederacy's strategic, economic, and psychological ability to wage war had to be definitively crushed. They believed that to break the backbone of the South, the North had to employ scorched earth tactics, or as Sherman called it, "Hard War". Sherman's advance through Georgia and the Carolinas was characterized by the 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
Conscription is the compulsory enrollment of civilians into military service. Conscription allowed the French Republic to form La Grande Armée, what Napoleon Bonaparte called "the nation in arms", which successfully battled smaller, professional European armies.Conscription, particularly when the conscripts are being sent to foreign wars that do not directly affect the security of the nation, has historically been highly politically contentious in democracies. For instance, during World War I, bitter political disputes broke out in Canada, Newfoundland, Australia and New Zealand over conscription. Canada also had a political 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.
In developed nations, the increasing emphasis on technological firepower and better-trained fighting forces, the sheer unlikelihood of a conventional military assault on most developed nations, as well as memories of widespread controversies over the Vietnam War, make mass conscription less likely, but still possible, in the future.
Russia, as well as many smaller nations such as Switzerland, retain mainly conscript armies.
Transportation
Land
Prior to the invention of the motorized transport, combatants were transported by wagons, horses and by marching. With the advent of locomotives, large groups of combatants, supplies, and equipment were able to be transported faster and in larger numbers. To counter this, an opposing force would destroy rail lines to hinder their enemies' movements. General Sherman's men during the American Civil War, would destroy tracks, heat the rails, and wrap them around trees.The mass transportation of combatants was further revolutionized with the advent of the internal combustion engine and the automobile. Combined with the widespread use of the machine gun, the horse, after millennia of use, was finally supplanted in its war time role. During both WWI and WWII, trucks were used to carry combatants and materiel, while cars and jeeps were used to scout enemy positions.
The mechanization of infantry occurred during WWII. The tank, a product of World War I independently invented by the British and French to break through trenches while withstanding machine gun fire, while discounted by many, came into its own. Tanks evolved from thin-skinned, lumbering vehicles into fast, powerful war machines of various types that dominated the battlefield and allowed the Germans to conquer most of Europe. As a result of the tank's evolution, a number of armored transport vehicles appeared, such as armoured personnel carriers and amphibious vehicles.
After the war ended, armored transports continued to evolve. The armored car and train declined in use, largely becoming relegated to military and civilian use as transportation for VIPs. Infantry fighting vehicles rose to prominence with the creation of the Soviet BMP-1. IFVs are a more combat capable version of the APC, with heavier armaments, while still retaining the ability to transport combatants into and out of battles.
Sea
Sealift is a military logistics term referring to the use of cargo ships for the deployment of military assets, such as weaponry, military personnel, and materiel supplies. It complements other means of transport, such as strategic airlifters, in order to enhance a state's ability to project power. A state's sealift capabilities may include civilian-operated ships that normally operate by contract, but which can be chartered or commandeered during times of military necessity to supplement government-owned naval fleets.During WWI, the United States bought, borrowed or commandeered vessels of various types, ranging from pleasure craft to ocean liners to transport the American Expeditionary Force to Europe. Many of these ships were scrapped, sold or returned to their owners after the war.
Air
There are two different kinds of airlifts in warfare, a strategic airlift and a tactical airlift. A strategic airlift is the use transporting of weapons, supplies and personnel over long distances using large cargo aircraft. This contrasts with tactical airlifts, which involves transporting the same above items within a theater of operations. This usually involves cargo planes with shorter ranges and slower speeds, but higher maneuverability.Communications
- Cryptography
- Homing pigeon/War pigeon
- Joint Army/Navy Phonetic Alphabet
- Message precedence
- Semaphore
- Signal Corps
- Smoke signal
- Telegraphy
Equipment
- Aldis lamp
- International maritime signal flags
Land warfare
The early part of the 19th century from 1815 to 1848 saw a long period of peace in Europe, accompanied by extraordinary industrial expansion. The industrial age brought about various technological advancements, each with their own implication. Land warfare moved from visual-range and semi person-to-person combat of the previous era, to indiscriminate and impersonal, "beyond visual range" warfare. The Crimean War saw the introduction of trench warfare, long-range artillery, railroads, the telegraph, and the rifle. The mechanized mass-destruction of enemy combatants grew ever more deadly. In WWI machine-guns, barbed wire, chemical weapons, and land-mines entered the battlefield. The deadly stalemated trench-warfare stage was finally passed with the advent of the modern armored tank late in WWI.
One major trend involved the transition away massed infantry fire and human waves to more refined tactics. This became possible with the superseding of earlier weapons like the highly inaccurate musket.
Technological advances
Rifling refers to the act of adding spiral grooves to the inside of the barrel of a firearm. The grooves would cause a projectile to spin as it traveled down the barrel, improving range and accuracy. Once rifling became easier and practical, a new type of firearm was introduced, the rifle. It gave combatants the ability to specifically target an enemy combatant, rather than have large numbers of combatants fire in a general direction. It effectively broke up groups of combatants into smaller more maneuverable units.Artillery are large guns designed to fire large projectiles a great distance. Early artillery pieces were large and cumbersome with slow rates of fire. This reduced their use to sieges, by both defenders and attackers. With the advent of the industrial age and various technological advancements, lighter, yet powerful and accurate artillery pieces were produced. This gave rise to field artillery which were used on a tactical level to support troops.
Machine guns are fully automatic guns. In this era of warfare they only existed as mounted support weapons, as automatic firearms were not yet developed. Early machine guns as invented by Richard Gatling, were hand cranked but evolved into truly automatic machine guns by Maxim at the end of the era. Machine guns were valued for their ability to smash infantry formations, especially attacking enemy formations when they were dense. This, along with effective field artillery, changed tactics drastically.