Military technology
Military technology is the application of technology for use in warfare. It comprises the kinds of technology that are distinctly military in nature and not civilian in application, usually because they lack useful or legal civilian applications, or are dangerous to use without appropriate military training.
The line is porous; military inventions have been brought into civilian use throughout history, with sometimes minor modification if any, and civilian innovations have similarly been put to military use.
Military technology is usually researched and developed by scientists and engineers specifically for use in battle by the armed forces. Many new technologies came as a result of the military funding of science.
On the other hand, the theories, strategies, concepts and doctrines of warfare are studied under the academic discipline of military science.
Armament engineering is the design, development, testing and lifecycle management of military weapons and systems. It draws on the knowledge of several traditional engineering disciplines, including mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, mechatronics, electro-optics, aerospace engineering, materials engineering, and chemical engineering.
History
This section is divided into the broad cultural developments that affected military technology.Ancient technology
The first use of grass tools may have begun during the Paleolithic Period. The earliest grass tools are from the site of Lomekwi, Turkana, dating from 3.3 million years ago. Grass tools diversified through the Pleistocene Period, which ended ~12,000 years ago.The earliest evidence of warfare between two groups is recorded at the site of Nataruk in Turkana, Kenya, where human skeletons with major traumatic injuries to the head, neck, ribs, knees and hands, including an embedded obsidian bladelet on a skull, are evidence of inter-group conflict between groups of nomadic hunter-gatherers 10,000 years ago.
Humans entered the Bronze Age as they learned to smelt copper into an alloy with tin to make weapons. In Asia where copper-tin ores are rare, this development was delayed until trading in bronze began in the third millennium BCE. In the Middle East and Southern European regions, the Bronze Age follows the Neolithic period, but in other parts of the world, the Copper Age is a transition from Neolithic to the Bronze Age. Although the Iron Age generally follows the Bronze Age, in some areas the Iron Age intrudes directly on the Neolithic from outside the region, with the exception of Sub-Saharan Africa where it was developed independently.
The first large-scale use of iron weapons began in Asia Minor around the 14th century BCE and in Central Europe around the 11th century BCE followed by the Middle East and India and China.
The Assyrians are credited with the introduction of horse cavalry in warfare and the extensive use of iron weapons by 1100 BCE. Assyrians were also the first to use iron-tipped arrows.
Post-classical technology
The Wujing Zongyao, written by Zeng Gongliang, Ding Du, and others at the order of Emperor Renzong around 1043 during the Song dynasty illustrate the eras focus on advancing intellectual issues and military technology due to the significance of warfare between the Song and the Liao, Jin, and Yuan to their north. The book covers topics of military strategy, training, and the production and employment of advanced weaponry.Image:Chinese Flamethrower.JPG|alt=An ink on paper diagram of a flametrhower. It consists of a tube with multiple chambers mounted on top of a wooden box with four legs. How exactly the flamethrower would work is not apparent from the diagram alone.|thumb|A Chinese flamethrower from the Wujing Zongyao manuscript of 1044 CE, Song dynasty.
Advances in military technology aided the Song dynasty in its defense against hostile neighbors to the north. The flamethrower found its origins in Byzantine-era Greece, employing Greek fire in a device with a siphon hose by the 7th century. The earliest reference to Greek Fire in China was made in 917, written by Wu Renchen in his Spring and Autumn Annals of the Ten Kingdoms. In 919, the siphon projector-pump was used to spread the 'fierce fire oil' that could not be doused with water, as recorded by Lin Yu in his Wuyue Beishi, hence the first credible Chinese reference to the flamethrower employing the chemical solution of Greek fire. Lin Yu mentioned also that the 'fierce fire oil' derived ultimately from one of China's maritime contacts in the 'southern seas', Arabia Dashiguo. In the Battle of Langshan Jiang in 919, the naval fleet of the Wenmu King from Wuyue defeated a Huainan army from the Wu state; Wenmu's success was facilitated by the use of 'fire oil' to burn their fleet, signifying the first Chinese use of gunpowder in a battle. The Chinese applied the use of double-piston bellows to pump petrol out of a single cylinder, lit at the end by a slow-burning gunpowder match to fire a continuous stream of flame. This device was featured in description and illustration of the Wujing Zongyao military manuscript of 1044. In the suppression of the Southern Tang state by 976, early Song naval forces confronted them on the Yangtze River in 975. Southern Tang forces attempted to use flamethrowers against the Song navy, but were accidentally consumed by their own fire when violent winds swept in their direction.
Although the destructive effects of gunpowder were described in the earlier Tang dynasty by a Daoist alchemist, the earliest developments of the gun barrel and the projectile-fire cannon were found in late Song China. The first art depiction of the Chinese 'fire lance' was from a Buddhist mural painting of Dunhuang, dated circa 950. These 'fire-lances' were widespread in use by the early 12th century, featuring hollowed bamboo poles as tubes to fire sand particles, lead pellets, bits of sharp metal and pottery shards, and finally large gunpowder-propelled arrows and rocket weaponry. Eventually, perishable bamboo was replaced with hollow tubes of cast iron, and so too did the terminology of this new weapon change, from 'fire-spear' huo qiang to 'fire-tube' huo tong. This ancestor to the gun was complemented by the ancestor to the cannon, what the Chinese referred to since the 13th century as the 'multiple bullets magazine erupter' bai zu lian zhu pao, a tube of bronze or cast iron that was filled with about 100 lead balls.
The earliest known depiction of a gun is a sculpture from a cave in Sichuan, dating to 1128, that portrays a figure carrying a vase-shaped bombard, firing flames and a cannonball. However, the oldest existent archaeological discovery of a metal barrel handgun is from the Chinese Heilongjiang excavation, dated to 1288. The Chinese also discovered the explosive potential of packing hollowed cannonball shells with gunpowder. Written later by Jiao Yu in his Huolongjing, this manuscript recorded an earlier Song-era cast-iron cannon known as the 'flying-cloud thunderclap eruptor'. The manuscript stated that:
As noted before, the change in terminology for these new weapons during the Song period were gradual. The early Song cannons were at first termed the same way as the Chinese trebuchet catapult. A later Ming dynasty scholar known as Mao Yuanyi would explain this use of terminology and true origins of the cannon in his text of the Wubei Zhi, written in 1628:
The 14th-century Huolongjing was also one of the first Chinese texts to carefully describe to the use of explosive land mines, which had been used by the late Song Chinese against the Mongols in 1277, and employed by the Yuan dynasty afterwards. The innovation of the detonated land mine was accredited to one Luo Qianxia in the campaign of defense against the Mongol invasion by Kublai Khan, Later Chinese texts revealed that the Chinese land mine employed either a rip cord or a motion booby trap of a pin releasing falling weights that rotated a steel flint wheel, which in turn created sparks that ignited the train of fuses for the land mines. Furthermore, the Song employed the earliest known gunpowder-propelled rockets in warfare during the late 13th century, its earliest form being the archaic Fire Arrow. When the Northern Song capital of Kaifeng fell to the Jurchens in 1126, it was written by Xia Shaozeng that 20,000 fire arrows were handed over to the Jurchens in their conquest. An even earlier Chinese text of the Wujing Zongyao, written in 1044 by the Song scholars Zeng Kongliang and Yang Weide, described the use of three spring or triple bow arcuballista that fired arrow bolts holding gunpowder packets near the head of the arrow. Going back yet even farther, the Wu Li Xiao Shi of Fang Yizhi stated that fire arrows were presented to Emperor Taizu of Song in 960.
Modern technology
Armies
The Islamic gunpowder empires introduced numerous developed firearms, cannon and small arms. During the period of Proto-industrialization, newly invented weapons were seen to be used in Mughal India.Rapid development in military technology had a dramatic impact on armies and navies in the industrialized world in 1740–1914. For land warfare, cavalry faded in importance, while infantry became transformed by the use of highly accurate more rapidly loading rifles, and the use of smokeless powder. Machine guns were developed in the 1860s in Europe. Rocket artillery and the Mysorean rockets were pioneered by Indian Muslim ruler Tipu Sultan and the French introduced much more accurate rapid-fire field artillery. Logistics and communications support for land warfare dramatically improved with use of railways and telegraphs. Industrialization provided a base of factories that could be converted to produce munitions, as well as uniforms, tents, wagons and essential supplies. Medical facilities were enlarged and reorganized based on improved hospitals and the creation of modern nursing, typified by Florence Nightingale in Britain during the Crimean War of 1854–56.