LECTURE 6: INDUSTRIAL WAR
As weapons—particularly small arms—became easier to use, countries began to abandon a complete reliance on professional soldiers in favor of conscription. Technological advances became increasingly important; while the armies of the previous period had usually had similar weapons, the industrial age saw encounters such as the Battle of Sadowa, in which possession of a more advanced technology played a decisive role in the outcome.
Conscription was employed in industrial warfare to increase the amount of soldiers that were available for combat. This was used by Napoleon Bonaparte in the Napoleonic Wars.
Total war was used in industrial warfare, the objective being to prevent the opposing nation to engage in war. William Tecumseh Sherman's "March to the Sea" and Philip Sheridan's burning of the Shenandoah Valley are examples of total warfare.
In modern times, war has evolved from an activity steeped in tradition to a scientific enterprise where success is valued above methods. The notion of total war is the extreme of this trend.[citation needed] Militaries have developed technological advances rivalling the scientific accomplishments of any other field of study.[citation needed]
However, it should be noted that modern militaries benefit in the development of these technologies under the funding of the public, the leadership of national governments, and often in cooperation with large civilian groups, such as the General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin corporations, in the United States. And as for "total war," it may be argued that it is not an exclusive practice of modern militaries, but in the tradition of genocidal conflict that marks even tribal warfare to this day.[citation needed] What distinguishes modern military organizations from those previous is not their willingness to prevail in conflict by any method, but rather the technological variety of tools and methods available to modern battlefield commanders, from submarines to satellites, from knives to nuclear warheads.[citation needed]
Some of the military unit types and technologies which were developed in modern times are:
- Ammunition
- Armory
- Conscription
- Grenadier
- Sappers and Miners
- Marine
- Aviation
- Rifleman
- Special Forces
- Naval Combatant
- Global Information Grid
- Active Electronically Scanned Array
- Network-centric warfare
- Supercomputer
- Space warfare
- Cyberwar
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