Tactics, in warfare, the art and science of fighting battles on land, on sea, and in the air. It is concerned with the approach to combat; the disposition of troops and other personalities; the use made of various arms, ships, or aircraft; and the execution of movements for attack or defense.



Evolution of the term

The word tactics originates in the Greek taxis, meaning order, arrangement, or disposition—including the kind of disposition in which armed formations used to enter and fight battles. From this, the Greek historian Xenophon derived the term tactica, the art of drawing up soldiers in array. Likewise, the Tactica, an early 10th-century handbook said to have been written under the supervision of the Byzantine emperor Leo VI the Wise, dealt with formations as well as weapons and the ways of fighting with them.

The term tactics fell into disuse during the European Middle Ages. It reappeared only toward the end of the 17th century, when “Tacticks” was used by the English encyclopaedist John Harris to mean “the Art of Disposing any Number of Men into a proposed form of Battle.” Further development took place toward the end of the 18th century. Until then, authors had considered fighting to be almost the sum total of war; now, however, it began to be regarded as merely one part of war. The art of fighting itself continued to carry the name tactics, whereas that of making the fight take place under the most favourable circumstances, as well as utilizing it after it had taken place, was given a new name: strategy.

Since then, the terms tactics and strategy have usually marched together, but over time each has acquired both a prescriptive and a descriptive meaning. There have also been attempts to distinguish between minor tactics, the art of fighting individuals or small units, and grand tactics, a term coined about 1780 by the French military author Jacques-Antoine-Hippolyte de Guibert to describe the conduct of major battles. However, this distinction seems to have been lost recently, and the concept of grand tactics has been replaced by the concept of the so-called operational level of war. This may be because, as will be discussed below, battle in the classical sense—that is, of a pitched encounter between the belligerents’ main forces—no longer exists.

Victory through force and guile

The tactics adopted by each separate army on each separate occasion depend on such circumstances as terrain, weather, organization, weaponry, and the enemy in addition to the purpose at hand. Nevertheless, while circumstances and purposes vary, the fundamental principles of tactics, like those of strategy, are eternal. At bottom they derive from the fact that, in war, two forces, each of which is free to exercise its independent will, meet in an attempt to destroy each other while at the same time attempting to avoid being destroyed. To achieve this double aim, they can rely on either force or guile. Assuming the two sides to be approximately equal—in other words, that neither is so strong as to be able to ride roughshod over the other (in which case tactics are hardly required)—a combination of both force and guile is necessary.

To employ force, it is necessary to concentrate in time and place. To employ guile, it is necessary to disperse, hide, and feint. Force is best generated by taking the shortest route toward the objective and focusing all available resources on one and the same action, whereas guile implies dispersion, the use of circuitous paths, and never doing the same thing twice. These two factors, most conducive to victory in battle, are not complementary; on the contrary, they can normally be employed only at each other’s expense. In this way tactics (as well as strategy) are subject to a peculiar logic—one similar to that of competitive games such as football or chess but radically different from that governing technological activities such as construction or engineering, where there is no living, thinking opponent capable of reacting to one’s moves. To describe this kind of logic, the American military writer Edward Luttwak has used the term paradoxical. The title is apt, but the idea is as old as warfare itself.

The single most effective means available to the tactician consists of putting his enemy on the horns of a dilemma—deliberately creating a situation in which he is “damned if he does and damned if he does not.” For example, commanders have always attempted to outflank or encircle the enemy, thus dividing his forces and compelling him to face in two directions at once. Another example, well known to the early modern age, consisted of confronting the enemy with coordinated attacks by cavalry and cannon—the former to force him to close ranks, the latter to compel him to open them. A good 20th-century example was the World War I practice—revived by the Iraqis in their war against Iran in the 1980s—of shelling the enemy’s front with a combination of high explosive and gas. The former was designed to compel him to seek cover, the latter, being heavier than air, to abandon it on pain of suffocation.

The need for flexibility

Thus considered, the principles of tactics look simple enough. However, it is one thing to analyze tactics in the abstract but entirely another thing to put theory into practice under different circumstances, on different kinds of terrain, against different kinds of enemy, with the aid of troops who may be tired or confused or recalcitrant, and amid every kind of mortal danger. As the great Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz said, “In war everything is simple, but even the simplest thing is difficult.” Sophisticated tactics require well-trained, articulated forces consisting of different units that are armed with different weapons and possess different capabilities. Next, these units must be subordinated to a single directing brain and must be employed in a coordinated manner following a single, well-considered plan: hence the principle of unity of command.

Even then, tactics are not just a question of executing a plan, however clever and well conceived. In tactics, even more than elsewhere, a commander who can only make a plan and carry it out avails nothing; inasmuch as he is confronting a living enemy, what matters is his ability to adapt the plan to that enemy’s reactions rapidly, smoothly, and without losing his grip. Flexibility is thus a cardinal principle of tactics. But flexibility will prevail only if it can be bound by a firm disciplinary framework. Moreover, flexibility and discipline are not easy to combine and can often be achieved only at each other’s expense. Other things being equal, the larger and more powerful a given force, the less flexible it will be.

As an armed force exchanges blows with an enemy, adapting to his moves and forcing him to adapt in return, opportunities to take him by surprise should present themselves. Surprise presupposes secrecy, but secrecy may be hard to combine with the rapid action that is often necessary for implementing surprise. Like everything else in tactics, overcoming this paradox is a matter of striking a balance, first in general and then against a specific enemy, under specific circumstances and with a specific objective in mind.

The importance of terrain

Finally, in tactics (as in strategy) there is the topographical element to consider. Land warfare is fought neither in a vacuum nor on a uniformly checkered board. Instead, it unfolds over concrete terrain, including roads, passages, elevated ground, cover, and obstacles of every kind. Victory goes to him who best understands and utilizes the terrain; this may be done by, for example, occupying dominant ground, utilizing cover, compelling the enemy to fight on terrain for which his forces are not suitable, cornering him, outflanking him, or surrounding him. All these methods are as old as warfare, yet at the same time they remain relevant to the present age. On their correct application the outcome of battle depends.

Historical development

Tribal and ancient tactics

The ambush and the trial of strength

The oldest, most primitive field tactics are those that rely on concealment and surprise—i.e., the ambush and the raid. Such tactics, which are closely connected to those used in hunting and may indeed have originated in the latter, are well known to tribal societies all over the world. Typically the operation gets under way when warriors, having reconnoitred the terrain and stalked their enemy, take up concealed positions and wait for the signal. The engagement opens by means of such long-range missile weapons as the javelin, the bow, the sling, and the tomahawk. Once the enemy has been thrown into disorder and some of his personnel killed or wounded, cover is discarded, and short-range weapons such as club, spear, and dagger are employed for delivering the coup de grace. Since concealment is vital and there is no sophisticated logistic apparatus, the number of combatants is usually no more than a few dozen or, at the very most, a few hundred. Tactical units are unknown and command arrangements, to the extent that they exist at all, elementary. None of this, however, is to say that such tactics are simpleminded. On the contrary, making the best use of difficult terrain such as mountains, forests, or swamps usually requires much skill and presupposes an intimate familiarity with the surroundings.

Apart from ambush and raid, which depend on making the best possible use of terrain, many primitive tribes also engage in formal, one-to-one frontal encounters that are part battle, part sport. The weapons employed on such occasions usually consist of the club (or its more advanced form, the mace), spear, and javelin, sometimes joined by the bow and special blunted arrows. Defensive armour consists of nonmetallic body cover of wood, leather, or wickerwork, often made in fantastic forms and painted extravagant colours in order to enlist the aid of spirits and terrify the opponent. Such fights differ from those described above in that the warriors stand in full view of each other across specially selected level terrain, the objective being to please the spectators and gather glory for themselves. However, here too there can be no question either of formations or of a command system. Rather, each man picks his opponent and fights separately. Hence, it is impossible to speak of tactics, except in the limited sense of the skill displayed by individual warriors in handling their weapons.

The phalanx

To judge from numerous descriptions in Homer, archaic Greek warriors still acted in this way. The heroes on each side knew each other by reputation and sought each other out, forming pairs and fighting hand-to-hand without any regard for either collective action or the discipline and organization that were needed for it. However, the Iliad also contains passages that may indicate a more advanced form of tactics—namely, the phalanx. Phalanx tactics are known from ancient Sumer and Egypt as well as from Greece. Their essence consisted of packing troops together in dense, massive blocks, to some extent sacrificing flexibility, mobility, and the possibility of concealment in order to achieve mutual protection and maximize striking power. In Greek armies the usual number of ranks was 8, but formations 16 and even 50 deep are recorded. Insofar as they relied on brute force, such tactics were often considered primitive even in their own day—for example, by the Persian commander Mardonius in describing them to his master, Xerxes I. For a phalanx to execute even a simple lateral evasive move, the troops had to be “professors of war”; such was the Roman historian Plutarch’s expression in describing the disaster suffered by Sparta at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 bc. As Sumerian reliefs, Egyptian wooden models, and Greek narratives show, the typical weapons employed by the phalanx were consistently short-range, hand-held instruments such as sword, spear, and pike, used in accordance to whether individual duels or mass action was considered more important. These weapons were invariably combined with defensive gear such as helmets, corselets, shields, and greaves, although here too the amount of protection varied from one case to the next (see photograph).

The chariot

Invented in the 3rd millennium bc, the first chariots seem to have been too slow and cumbersome to serve in combat, but about 2000 bc the light, horse-drawn, two-wheeled vehicles destined to revolutionize tactics appeared in the Western Steppe and Mesopotamia, Syria, and Turkey, from which they spread in all directions. In combination with the bow, the chariot represented a very effective system, so much so that in biblical times it became almost synonymous with military power. The great advantage of the chariot was its speed, which permitted it to drive circles around the phalanx, staying out of range while raining arrows on the foot soldiers. Once the latter had been thrown into disorder, it might be possible to put the chariots into formation, charge, and ride the enemy down. Relying on such tactics, the chariot-riding Aryan peoples were able to undertake some of the most extensive conquests in history, spreading over the Eurasian landmass and inflicting crushing defeats on the materially much more advanced Egyptian and Indian civilizations. The chariot’s principal drawbacks were its expense and unsuitability for difficult terrain. Also, it made inefficient use of manpower, since each vehicle required a crew of two and sometimes three men—only one of whom actually handled offensive weapons and struck at the enemy.

Light and heavy cavalry

The next development following chariots was cavalry, which took two forms. From Mongolia to Persia and Anatolia—and, later, on the North American plains as well—nomadic peoples fought principally with missile weapons, especially the bow in its short, composite variety. Equipped with only light armour, these horsemen were unable to hold terrain or to stand on the defensive. Hence, they were forced to employ their characteristic highly mobile “swarming” tactics, riding circles around the enemy, keeping their distance from him, showering him with arrows, engaging in feigned retreats, luring him into traps and ambushes, and forming into a solid mass only at the end of the battle with the aim of delivering the coup de grace. Being obliged to keep their possessions few and light, nomads typically were unable to compete with sedentary civilizations in general material development, including not least metallurgy. Nevertheless, as the Mongols’ campaigns were to show, their war-making methods, natural hardihood, and excellent horsemanship made them the equal of anyone in either Asia or Europe until at least the end of the 13th century ad.

Among the technically more advanced sedentary civilizations on both edges of the Eurasian landmass, a different kind of cavalry seems to have emerged shortly after 1000 bc. Reliefs from great Assyrian palaces show horsemen, clad in armour and armed with spear or lance, who were used in combination with other troops such as light and heavy infantry. The function of these cataphracts (from the Greek word for “armour”) was not to engage in long-distance combat but to launch massed shock action, first against the enemy cataphracts and then, having gained the field, against the enemy foot. The fact that ancient cavalry apparently did not possess the stirrup has often led modern historians to question the mounted soldier’s effectiveness. They argue that, since riders held on only by pressure of their knees, their ability to deliver shock was limited by the fear of falling off their mounts. This argument fails to note that, particularly in Hellenistic times and again in late Roman ones, cavalry forces did indeed play an important, often decisive, part in countless battles. Still, it is true that never during classical antiquity did cavalry succeed in replacing the formations of heavy infantry that remained the backbone of every army.

Combined infantry and cavalry

Classical Greek warfare, as mentioned above, consisted almost exclusively of frontal encounters between massive phalanxes on both sides. However, about the time of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 bc), the phalanx became somewhat more articulated. This permitted the introduction of elementary tactical maneuvers such as massing one’s forces at a selected point, outflanking the enemy, and the oblique approach (in which one wing stormed the enemy while the other was held back). In addition, the phalanx began to be combined with other kinds of troops, such as light infantry (javelin men and slingers) and cavalry. Indeed, the history of Greek warfare can be understood as a process by which various previously existing types of troops came to be combined, integrated, and made to support one another. This development gained momentum in 4th-century battles, such as the one fought by Thebes against the Thessalians at Cynoscephalae in 364 bc, and it culminated in the hands of Alexander III the Great, whose army saw most of these different troops fighting side by side. The major exception was horse archers, which were incompatible with a settled way of life and which never caught on in the West. Another was the chariot, which was already obsolescent and, except in backward Britain, disappeared almost completely after its defeat at the Battle of Gaugamela in 331 bc.

Commanding standing armies consisting of professionals, Alexander and his successors (diodochoi) operated on a much greater scale than did most of their predecessors. The most important diodochoi were quite capable of concentrating 80,000 to 100,000 men at a single spot, as did both Ptolemy IV and his Seleucid opponent Antiochus III at Raphia in 217 bc. These armies typically went into battle with a force of light infantrymen in front (elephants were sometimes used, but on the whole they proved as dangerous to their own side as to the enemy). Behind the light troops came the heavy phalanx, flanked by cavalry on both sides. The action would start with each side’s light troops trying to drive the opponents back upon their phalanx, thus throwing it into disorder. Meanwhile, the cavalry stood on both sides. Usually one wing, commanded either by the king in person or by one of his closest subordinates, would storm forward. If it succeeded in driving away the opposing cavalry—and provided it remained under control—it could then swing inward and act as the hammer to the phalanx’s anvil. Such were the methods by which the great Hellenistic battles such as Gabiene (317 bc) and Ipsus (301 bc) were won. The same applied to the one fought by Hannibal at Cannae in 216 bc; this owed its exceptionally decisive character to the envelopment of the Roman infantry by two cavalry arms instead of one.

The legion

Though its exact origins are unknown, the Roman legion seems to have developed from the phalanx. In fact, it was a collection of small, well-integrated, well-coordinated phalanxes arrayed in checkerboard formation and operating as a team. Hellenistic heavy infantry relied on the pike almost exclusively; the legion, by contrast, possessed both shock and firepower—the former in the form of the short sword, or gladius, the latter delivered by the javelin, or pilum, of which most (after 100 bc, all) legionnaires carried two. Screening was provided by light troops moving in front, cohesion by pikemen in the third and rearmost rank. Short arms made it easier for individual soldiers or subunits to turn and change direction. Too, careful articulation, a well-rehearsed command system, and the use of standards—which do not seem to have been carried by Hellenistic armies—made the legion a much more flexible organization than the phalanx. No Greek army could have imitated the movement carried out by Caesar’s troops at Ruspinum in Africa in 47 bc, when part of a legion was made to turn around and face an enemy cavalry force coming from the rear. As numerous battles showed, where the terrain was uneven and the chain of command broke down, the legion’s advantage was even more pronounced. A phalanx whose ranks were thrown into disorder and penetrated by the enemy’s infantrymen was usually lost; a legionary commander could rely on his soldiers’ swords to deal with intruders, meanwhile bringing up additional units from both flanks.

As a formation whose main power consisted of its heavy infantry, the legion remained unmatched until the introduction of firearms and beyond. Attempts to imitate its armament and methods were made right down to the 16th century, and even today some countries still call their forces legions in commemoration of its prowess. During the 1st century bc, legionary organization underwent some changes at the hands of Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla until it reached the zenith of its development about the time of Caesar. Subunits became larger, and the legion incorporated a detachment of heavy cavalry as well as field artillery in the form of catapults—thus turning into a combined-arms unit and becoming a true forerunner of the modern division. Yet the legion, too, had its limitations when it came to fighting in the dense forests of Germany or, even more so, the open deserts of the Middle East. As Marcus Licinius Crassus’ disastrous defeat at Carrhae in 53 bc demonstrated, it met its match in the eastern light cavalry, with which it could never really come to grips, so that, even after repeated attempts, the Romans failed to subdue Parthia as they had so many other countries. The lesson was not lost. From the time of Belisarius in the 6th century ad, the Byzantine army always supplemented its infantry and heavy cavalry with units of horse archers, usually consisting of mercenaries recruited from various barbarian tribes. In this way, they were able to counter the Arabs and, later, the Seljuqs.

Medieval tactics in the West

The barbarians


The mounted knight




Bowmen and pikemen

The first field tactics that proved capable of countering the knight were built around the bow and the crossbow. Both might be used either in difficult terrain or from behind some artificial obstacle such as pits (as at Bannockburn in 1314), stakes (as at Crécy in 1346, Poitiers in 1356, and Agincourt in 1415), or a trench dug in the earth. The bow in its most powerful form, the longbow, was a cheap, low-class weapon originally associated with primitive social organizations such as the Welsh tribes. The crossbow, a much more expensive and sophisticated weapon, was typically employed by urban militias and mercenaries. The two weapons’ technical characteristics were somewhat different, especially as regards the crossbow’s shorter range, lower rate of fire, and greater penetrating power; as a result, they were seldom seen side by side in the same battle. However, both were capable of defeating armour, even the heavy plate worn toward the close of the Middle Ages, and were therefore useful against knights when properly employed. Proper employment meant selecting suitable positions and forming long, thin formations, sometimes in the form of a shallow W in order to trap attackers and enfilade them. Because formations such as these were difficult to move from place to place, they and the weapons on which they were based were better suited for the defense than for the offense.

This particular disadvantage was not shared by two other nonchivalrous weapons, the halberd and pike. Pikes were used by the Scots against Edward I at Falkirk in 1298 and by the Flemish against French chivalry at Courtrai in 1302. Subsequently they became the specialty of the Swiss, who, for topographical and economic reasons, never had much use for horses and knightly trappings. A Haufe (German: “heap”) of Swiss infantry had much in common with a Macedonian phalanx, except that it was smaller and more maneuverable. Most of the troops seem to have been lightly armoured, wearing helmet and corselet but not being burdened by either greaves or shield. Hence, they possessed good mobility and formidable striking power. The first shock would be delivered by the pikes sticking out in front, after which the halberdiers would leave formation to do their deadly work. The Swiss differed from the Macedonians in that they did not combine the phalanx with cavalry but relied on infantry for both fixing the enemy and striking him. Usually they entered battle in three columns moving independently, thus permitting a variety of maneuvers as well as mutual support. An enemy could be engaged from the front, then hit in the flank by a second Haufe following the first in echelon formation.

Though it is hard to be certain, apparently the hard-marching Swiss possessed sufficient operational mobility to keep up with cavalry, at any rate in confined terrain such as Alpine valleys. If the worst occurred and an isolated column was caught in the open, the troops could always form a square or hedgehog, facing outward in all directions while keeping up a steady fire from their crossbows and relying on their pikes to keep the opposing horse at a respectful distance until help arrived. Whereas the Scots inhabited a northern wilderness, the Swiss were located in the centre of Europe, and, whereas the Flemish went down in front of French chivalry at Roosebeke in 1382, the Swiss won a series of spectacular victories at Morgarten (1315), Laupen (1339), Sempach (1386), and Granson (1476). These two factors combined to give Swiss tactics a reputation in Europe. From about 1450 to 1550, every leading prince either hired Swiss troops or set up units, such as the German Landsknechte, that imitated their weapons and methods—helping to bring down the entire feudal order.

Inferiority of medieval tactics

Compared to the most powerful ancient armies, however, even late medieval ones were impermanent and weak. Numbers never approached those fielded during Hellenistic and Roman times: it was a mighty medieval prince who could assemble 20,000 men (of whom perhaps 5,000 would be knights), and most forces were much smaller. Apart from the stirrup, an invention whose importance may have been exaggerated by modern historians, no important advances took place in military technology. Consequently, tactics tended to repeat themselves in cycles rather than undergo sustained, secular development—as was to become the case after 1500 and, above all, after 1830. If only because medieval discipline was often lax and organization usually elementary, sophisticated tactical maneuvers such as those which characterized the armies of Alexander, his Hellenistic successors, and the Romans at their best were few and far between. Otherwise put, the knightly system of making war was much more individualistic than its classical predecessors; had the two been pitted against each other, the earlier forms would likely have overcome the later.

The advent of firearms

Adaptation of pike and cavalry tactics

Gunpowder apparently reached Europe from the East shortly before 1300, and firearms appeared during the 14th century. Throughout the 15th century firearms and crossbows continued to be used side by side. The first battles actually to be decided by firearms were fought between French and Spanish troops on Italian soil early in the 16th century; these included Marignano (1515), Bicocca (1522), and, above all, Pavia (1525).

The first firearms were primitive devices lacking both buttstock and trigger; hence, they had to be held under the arm and could scarcely be aimed. It was only during the second half of the 15th century that the harquebus, which incorporated both of these features, made its appearance. This was a great improvement, but the harquebus still suffered from a low rate of fire as well as inaccuracy and unreliability. In order to compensate for these disadvantages and build staying power, 16th-century units such as the famous Spanish tercio were made up of pikemen surrounded by “sleeves” of harquebusiers on each corner. Much like the light armed troops of antiquity and the crossbowmen who accompanied the Swiss Haufen, harquebusiers would open the action and then retreat behind the pikemen as the latter came to close quarters with the enemy. Hence, 16th- and early 17th-century battles still tended to be decided by “push of pike,” as the saying went.

In the face of such formations, lance-carrying cavalry operating on its own was almost helpless. During the 16th century, an attempt was made to adapt cavalry to the new circumstances by arming it with short firearms such as pistols and carbines. These were difficult to load on horseback and had neither the range nor the accuracy to permit Mongol-style swarming tactics. Instead, the cavalrymen carrying them were trained to attack infantry formations by approaching them in serried ranks, firing at point-blank range, and withdrawing in turn—a maneuver resembling the orderly moves of a ballroom dance and known as the caracole. Insofar as they sacrificed the cavalry’s greatest advantages—namely, its mobility and sheer mass—such methods were never very effective. A much better system was to rely on combined arms, bombarding infantry formations with artillery (another 14th-century invention that began to make its impact felt on the battlefield from about 1500) and then, once the infantry had been shattered, sending in the heavy cavalry to complete the job with cold steel. Such methods were typical of Gustav II Adolf and Oliver Cromwell about the middle of the 17th century.

The state-owned army

As European firearms improved, the old situation in which each people possessed its own weapons and, therefore, its own system of organization and tactics disappeared. From about 1600, so great was the superiority of European arms and military methods that non-European societies could survive, if at all, only by excluding or imitating them. Inside Europe, too, armies and tactics became increasingly alike. Gone were the days when one nation specialized in heavy cavalry, another in light cavalry, still another in pikemen, archers, or crossbowmen. Everywhere armed forces were becoming divorced from society at large and growing into regular, state-owned organizations that tended to resemble one another. These similarities were reinforced by the international character of warfare, which for centuries on end permitted individuals and even entire units to move from one service to another.

During the second half of the 16th century, every army came to consist of three arms: infantry, cavalry, and artillery. The trend was to add more and more of the first and third arms, while the second, though retaining its high social prestige, underwent a relative decline in numbers and importance. By the early 18th century a fourth arm, engineering, had differentiated itself from artillery, an arrangement that became standard in all armies after the Seven Years’ War (1756–63). Particularly after 1683, the year in which the Turks mounted their last major challenge and were repulsed at the gates of Vienna, European armies grew accustomed to seeing one another as their strongest opponents. Since they organized, trained, and equipped themselves to fight one another, there was a tendency to distinguish les grandes opérations de guerre from guerrilla, or small war, which was increasingly left to so-called free corps, or irregulars. As the regulars came to rely on heavier and heavier weapons, the gap between the two kinds of warfare grew. Ultimately, this specialization was to cost armies the ability to fight opponents that did not resemble themselves, but in the 17th century that development still remained far in the future.

Linear formation

Meanwhile, the improvement of firearms caused armour to be discarded. Infantry ceased wearing it almost completely after 1660, and the armour carried by cavalrymen grew steadily shorter until all that remained were the breastplates worn by heavy cavalry—the cuirassiers—as late as the 20th century. The harquebus developed into the heavier, more powerful musket, which soon acquired the flintlock firing mechanism. This was scarcely the perfect weapon, but it could be relied on to fire two or three times per minute to an effective range of 100–150 yards without misfiring more than 20 percent of the time. There was a constant tendency to increase the number of musketeers at the expense of pikemen until, by the end of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), their proportions had become about equal. To allow the maximum number of barrels to fire without mutual interference, tactical units grew smaller, and the number of ranks drawn up behind one another declined. From 8 to 10 at the time of Prince Maurice of Nassau early in the 17th century, it came down to 4 or 5 a century later, 3 or 4 in the armies of Frederick the Great, and 2 or 3 toward the end of the 18th century.

To maximize efficiency, drill was invented. It first made its impact felt in the Dutch army under Maurice of Nassau, a great teacher whose headquarters attracted aspiring officers from all over Europe. Standards, often modeled after Roman ones, were introduced to help units align themselves, and tactical movements were carried out to the sound of trumpets, bugles, and drums—the latter an Oriental innovation apparently brought to Europe about 1500. In this age of René Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, and Louis XIV, each of whom in his different way was determined to reduce the world to order, the military ideal was to achieve maximum reliability and efficiency by training troops to operate in a machinelike manner. This implied much tighter discipline and organization, which in turn required a shift toward the type of regular, professional forces that alone were capable of achieving them.

About 1670 the bayonet was invented, causing pikes to be discarded and homogeneous infantry to be created (though the expression “to trail a pike” lingered for another century). Apart from predicaments when it had to form squares in order to confront attacking cavalry, infantry now fought in very long, thin formations. Throughout the 18th century a lively debate was carried on concerning the best ways to employ these formations, but basically each side organized its forces in two lines separated by perhaps 300 to 400 yards and moving forward one behind the other. Though the precise arrangements varied from one army to the next, inside each line the units were organized by platoon, company, and battalion. Advancing toward each other, each side would hold its fire for as long as possible in order to close range and obtain a better aim, and then, acting upon the word of command, the opposing lines would fire salvo after salvo into each other. The final step consisted of fixing bayonets and storming the enemy—although, since one side usually broke, actual hand-to-hand fights seem to have been rare. Flank protection was provided by light cavalry such as dragoons or hussars, which were introduced in force between 1690 and 1740. Heavy cavalry would be held in reserve, ready to strike when a gap was created or a flank presented itself. During the second half of the 18th century another type of cavalry, the lancers, was added specifically to root out gunners hiding under their cannons’ barrels.

The first cannon were slow-firing devices much too cumbersome to take part in tactical maneuvers, and indeed so heavy were they that until about 1500 they were not even provided with wheels. Even then, the standard method was to position the guns in the intervals between units and in front of the advancing lines. This permitted them to open the battle but subsequently forced them to fall silent as the army advanced and left the gunners behind. To solve this problem, there was a steady tendency to make artillery smaller and more mobile, from the “leather guns” fielded by Gustav Adolf in the 1630s to the horse artillery developed after 1760—by which time anything heavier than 12-pounders (that is, firing 12-pound [5.4-kilogram] balls) was no longer considered suitable for battlefield use. It then became possible to move the guns during the combat, massing them against selected sections of the enemy front as the tactical situation might require. This flexibility, however, was offset by the fact that 18th-century linear formations were almost impossible to turn around. Hence, the really artistic touch consisted of so arranging things as to fall with one’s whole force upon one of the enemy’s flanks; witness the great victories that Frederick the Great, employing his so-called oblique order, achieved at Rossbach and Leuthen in 1757.

The French Revolution

The tactics of the French ancien régime received their final form in the Ordinance of 1791, which reflected the ideas of Jacques de Guibert; from then until 1831, when the next regulations appeared, formally speaking there was no change. The French Revolution was followed by a short period of tactical improvisation, brought about by the inexperience of the Revolutionary troops, who, unlike their predecessors, were not long-serving regulars but conscripts. However, order was soon restored, and at Jemappes in November 1792 French troops could be observed maneuvering with the best. As the British general Archibald Percival Wavell observed more than a century later, Napoleon was probably a greater strategist than he was a tactician. While he continued the work begun by the Revolution, perhaps his most important tactical innovation consisted of an increased reliance on skirmishers. Previous armies had also made use of skirmishers, but these were mostly irregulars such as the Austrian Pandours or the farmers who fired the opening shots in the American Revolution. Since desertion was less of a problem in post-1793 French armies, they could afford to employ regulars in this task. Deploying without any organized formations, skirmishers were permitted to open battles by moving as they saw fit, alternately firing and taking cover. They soon formed as much as one-third of the infantry. Meanwhile, lighter, better-designed artillery (following the system designed by Jean-Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval in the last years of the ancien régime) played an ever-increasing role, particularly since the quality of Napoleon’s infantry tended to decline after 1808. This permitted “grand batteries” to be assembled in the midst of battle and fire to be concentrated against selected spots in the enemy front until it was torn to shreds.

These changes apart, the bulk of armies, formed by infantry, continued to deploy much as they had before, and there is no evidence that French methods differed considerably from the rest. Having committed their skirmishers and cannonaded the enemy lines, commanders would form the infantry into one or more columns to launch the assault. Heavy cavalry would be held in reserve to deliver the coup de grace, and this would be followed by light cavalry, which was responsible for pursuit. Perhaps the most effective defensive tactics to counter this system were developed by the Duke of Wellington in Spain during the Peninsular War (1808–14). These consisted of drawing up the troops on the reverse side of a ridge, out of the reach of the attacker’s artillery, and then allowing the enemy infantry to approach until they could be blasted at almost point-blank range.

Tactics from Waterloo to the Bulge

The growing scale of battle

In many ways, the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 constituted a crucial turning point in the tactics of land warfare. Until then, even though weapons and methods had varied greatly, land battles had essentially been single events, taking up a few square miles and lasting no more than a few hours or a day at most. Consisting of formal trials of strength between the main forces of both sides, often enough battles resulted from a kind of tacit mutual consent to commence hostilities. Shifting an army from deep marching columns to thinner and wider fighting formations was a lengthy process; hence, battles very often took on a quasi-ceremonial, paradelike character and were attended by much pomp and circumstance. The short range of weapons—never more than a few hundred yards, usually much less—dictated lateral deployment in order to bring every available man (apart from tactical reserves) into action. Moreover, the means of communication, which had scarcely undergone any change since the dawn of history, imposed definite limits on the length of the fronts that could be controlled by a single commander—three to four miles at most. This in turn meant that the number of troops on each side very rarely exceeded 100,000, a limit that, as mentioned above, had already been reached by Hellenistic times. Indeed, whenever Napoleon brought more than 100,000 men into battle, he tended to lose control over some of them—as happened at Jena, when he forgot about three of the seven corps at his disposal. At Leipzig in 1813, 180,000 French troops faced almost 300,000 Prussians, Russians, Austrians, and Swedes, causing the battle to fall into three separate engagements that were hardly related to one another.

During the 19th century all this was to change, especially as the Industrial Revolution began to make its impact felt on the battlefield after about 1830. Following a century and a half of stagnation, small arms began to undergo rapid technological development. First came percussion caps, then rifled barrels, cylindro-conoidal bullets, breech-loading mechanisms, metal cartridges, and magazines. These improvements permitted tremendous increases in reliability, rate of fire, range, and accuracy—as exemplified by the French Chassepot rifle of 1866, which was sighted to 800 metres and was thus theoretically capable of hitting a target at six times the range of the old flintlock musket. Artillery underwent similar development as the old bronze or cast-iron muzzle-loaders gave way to rifled, breech-loading guns made of steel. From the middle of the century, the solid shot and canister that had long formed the principal types of ammunition were replaced by explosive shell, leading to another great increase in lethality and sheer destructive power.

As might be expected, these developments had a profound impact on tactics, even to the point where the very meaning of battle was transformed. Already during Napoleon’s time, presenting a solid wall of flesh to the enemy could result in exceedingly heavy casualties. As a result, some of his later battles—Wagram (1809) and Borodino (1812), in particular—were won by mass butchery rather than tactical finesse. Now, however, such methods became positively suicidal. In order to survive on the battlefield, troops, often acting against their officers’ wishes, had to discard their brilliant uniforms, lie down, take cover, and disperse. As a result, tightly packed formations disappeared or, in cases when they were retained by obtuse commanders, merely led to horrific casualties such as those suffered in Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg in 1863. First in the United States, then in Europe, tactical formations began to dissolve: following the Battle of Königgrätz in 1866, the Prussian chief of staff Helmuth von Moltke expressed concern over the tendency of entire armies to melt into skirmishing lines. The ability of officers to keep their units apart, their men in hand, and their objectives in view declined, if it did not actually disappear. These developments puzzled contemporaries, who came up with the most bizarre ideas as to how to deal with them. In the end, they favoured armies, such as the German one, that adapted to the new circumstances by decentralizing command and making greater use of the individual soldier’s initiative.

Insofar as dispersal took place, it caused fronts to grow much longer and less cohesive. From the middle of the 19th century, this tendency was reinforced by the larger number of troops produced by conscription. As battles took up more space, the number of men within a given area declined very sharply. Within each army, fewer troops were actually in action at any moment, giving and receiving fire. This, in turn, caused battles to grow much longer. During the American Civil War, some battles, such as Gettysburg, lasted three days, and one week-long series of engagements became known as the Seven Days’ Battles. Since modern weapons permitted fighting at longer ranges, gradually a situation was created where the rear areas of armies could be brought under fire just as well as their fronts. Battles, in brief, ceased to be distinct events that could be well defined in time and place and easily identified by crossed swords on a map. During World War I, it became routine for battles to spread over dozens of square miles and last weeks or even months. And, as aircraft became increasingly effective during World War II, they went far to obliterate the distinction between front and rear—another symptom of the changes brought about by modern technology.

The longer that battles lasted, usually the less severe were the casualties produced on any particular day. Throughout the 18th century until the French Revolutionary Wars, armies had fought at the very most three major battles during a campaigning season, which was normally calculated at 180 days. These were bloody affairs, since a few hours of murderous, eye-to-eye combat could easily produce 20, 25, or even 30 percent casualties. However, post-1870 armed forces used their rifled weapons to fire at each other at considerably longer ranges; they also operated in a much more dispersed manner and very seldom brought all or even most of their forces together at a single point. Hence, although over a period of time losses could be just as heavy, they seldom suffered as intensely in a single battle. To suffer casualties in excess of a few percent of strength in one day, as happened to the British at the First Battle of the Somme in 1916, was an exceptional calamity. It was as if, in an instinctive response to the overwhelming power of the new weapons, the fighting became more prolonged but less intense—there being only so much terror that men could stand.

The power of the defense

The last years of the 19th century witnessed the development of automatic weapons in the form of machine guns. Artillery, too, was revolutionized by the addition of recoil mechanisms, which obviated the need to resight the guns after each round and therefore permitted much more rapid fire. As a result the infantry, no longer able to survive the storm of steel sweeping the open terrain, was forced to seek refuge underground. The ineffectiveness of charging cavalry was proved by the immense losses it took during the Crimean and Franco-German wars: unable to follow foot soldiers into underground shelters, it languished and finally disappeared altogether. The tactical defense, rendered invisible by the substitution of smokeless powder for black powder, became much stronger than the offense. This development, the first signs of which could already be seen in the 1850s, dominated the South African War (1899–1902) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05)—although most European commanders refused to look facts in the face until the butchery of World War I. During that war, fronts, manned by armies whose troops numbered in the millions, solidified into continuous trench systems that were sometimes hundreds of miles long. Often there were two and even three lines of trenches protected in front by belts of mines and barbed wire hundreds of yards thick. From the rear they were linked to communication trenches, which led into them and allowed reinforcements to arrive without leaving cover.

To overcome a well-entrenched enemy was something that could be achieved, if at all, only by tremendous concentrations of heavy artillery. Directed by forward observers and from balloons and aircraft overlooking the battlefield, artillery fired high explosive, gas, or—ideally, since the two called for different and even contradictory responses—a combination of both. The number of rounds fired could run into the millions; even so, an astute defender needed neither despair nor expose his troops to the physical and psychological effects of a heavy bombardment landing on their dugouts. Instead, leaving only a thin screen to hold the forward line, he could keep his main forces out of the guns’ range. As in Wellington’s day, the preferred location of such defenses—witness the so-called Hindenburg Line built by the Germans in 1917—was on the reverse slope of a hill or ridge. This denied the enemy observation, complicated his planning, and made it much more difficult for him to register his artillery on target.

In its highest and most developed form, the World War I defensive system consisted of a fortified belt several miles deep. Its main strength was not its continuous trenches but rather its being studded with well-positioned, well-camouflaged strongpoints. So long as the belt held intact, the strongpoints faced forward, bringing fire to bear and acting as observation posts for their own defending artillery. They were, however, also capable of mounting an all-around defense even in the absence of communication with one another and with the rear, thus obstructing the successful attacker as well as delaying and canalizing his progress. Standing ready immediately behind the belt were units (usually the size of regiments, sometimes entire divisions) held in reserve for launching counterattacks. In the German army at any rate, the commanders of such units were often authorized, not to say required, to act on their own initiative without waiting for orders from rear headquarters. The saving of time that was achieved in this way usually permitted local breakthroughs to be quickly repaired, as happened at Cambrai in 1917.

In the face of such defenses, the best-organized attacks were often helpless. Attempts to follow up artillery bombardments by infantry attacking in lines (the method selected by the British at the Somme in 1916) merely led to enormous casualties unequaled in warfare before or since. Later in World War I the Germans, commanded by Erich Ludendorff, developed a new offensive system. The usual daylong and even week-long bombardments were replaced by shorter, more intensive barrages in which gas and high explosive were carefully coordinated and which lasted no more than a few hours. To maintain surprise, no registration rounds were fired, the guns being laid solely by means of mathematical calculation and weather reports. The attacking troops were organized in small, self-contained storming parties. Armed with light machine guns, hand grenades, light mortars, and even some specially designed artillery pieces light enough to be manhandled, they used so-called fire-and-movement tactics. Each subgroup advanced, took cover, and provided the other with covering fire in turn. Like other World War I infantry, the German Sturmtruppe suffered greatly from a lack of mobile radio linking them with their own artillery as well as rear headquarters, but, unlike the rest, they were able to overcome this problem to some extent by operating in a decentralized manner, filtering between enemy strongpoints and bypassing resistance in order to penetrate into the rear.

Regarded from a purely tactical point of view, the German methods were very effective. Having proved their worth at Caporetto in 1917, during the great offensives launched in the spring and early summer of 1918 the Germans repeatedly succeeded in driving through British and French defenses. Ultimately, however, they were brought to a halt by the inability of logistic services to follow up over the devastated terrain. Deprived of even the most elementary supplies, the attacking troops were forced to resort to looting and soon lost their cohesion. Sooner or later the breach they made was sealed by the other side’s reserves, leaving them stranded in the salient they themselves had created and thus exposed to counterattacks on three sides. It should be added, though, that the World War I offense stood a much better chance of succeeding in theatres other than the Western Front, including, in particular, Poland, Russia, and Palestine. In those theatres modern weapons—especially heavy artillery, which could not be brought up over underdeveloped transportation networks—were often less dense on the ground. Hence attacks could succeed, and in some circumstances even cavalry remained effective.

Another offensive weapon destined to have a great future was the tank. The idea of employing armoured vehicles on the battlefield was not new, dating back at least as far as Leonardo da Vinci (before 1500), but they first appeared on the battlefield in 1916 at the Somme. World War I tanks were either “male” or “female”; that is, they were armed either with cannon up to 75 millimetres in calibre or else with machine guns. They could drive through wire and cross trenches (sometimes by dropping fascines into them), crush or neutralize strongpoints, lay smoke screens, and serve as mobile cover for the infantry to follow. During the last two years of the war they were often employed in all these roles, sometimes with success (as at Amiens in August 1918) and sometimes without. Success often depended on numbers: tanks operating individually or in small groups, it was found, did not have sufficient shock effect. Their armour, only 12 to 16 millimetres thick, could be defeated by a determined defender employing field artillery, heavy machine guns, or even special rifles firing heavy ammunition. On the whole, then, early tanks were essentially motorized versions of ancient siege machines. Given their short range, low speed, and general clumsiness, they were suitable for little else.

The armoured offensive

In the decade following World War I, some armies accepted the superiority of the defense as a critical characteristic of modern warfare—a train of thought that caused the Maginot Line to be constructed in France. Elsewhere, there was a lively debate concerning the best way to break through defensive belts. Aside from air power, two principal solutions were put forward. One, which stressed continued development of the light infantry tactics that had achieved partial success in World War I, found particular favour in Germany, where the Reichswehr was prohibited from developing and deploying heavy weapons and where the chief of staff, Hans von Seeckt, built an elite army that would cut through the defense “like a knife through butter.” The other solution, particularly popular in Britain, was armour: improved tanks, operating much like the heavy cavalry of old, were supposed to overcome the defense and restore mobility to the battlefield. There were even visions of armies consisting entirely of tanks.

After 1935 the leading theoreticians reversed their positions. Some of the original proponents of tanks, notably the influential British strategist Basil Liddell Hart, now concluded that the defense had become much the stronger form of war and that armoured offensives would come to grief against a properly organized enemy. In Germany, by contrast, faith in the offensive was never lost, although Adolf Hitler encouraged progressive officers to forsake light infantry and take up tanks—in effect taking the tactical principles pioneered by light infantry in World War I and developing, modifying, and adapting them to armoured warfare. As a result, the Panzerwaffe was an elite force that grew out of the cavalry rather than the infantry, but it retained many elements of the latter’s mode of operations, including an emphasis on interarm cooperation, a decentralized system of command operating within an exceptionally disciplined framework, and a penchant for outflanking and bypassing obstacles rather than confronting them head on.

On a higher level, the Germans saw tanks not as simple siege machines but as fit for playing a strategic role. In World War II, the sequence of the previous war was reversed in that making an initial breach in the enemy’s defenses was usually entrusted to the artillery, infantry, and engineers, supported by dive-bombers when the opportunity offered. Once the breach had been made, tanks, accompanied by motorized and later mechanized infantry, poured through. Relying for reconnaissance on the Wehrmacht’s ubiquitous motorcycles, they fanned out in the enemy’s rear, overran his headquarters, cut his communications, and brought about his collapse by virtue of confusion as much as anything else. To ward off counterattacks against flank and rear, reliance was placed both on the Luftwaffe and on excellent antitank artillery (from 1941 some of the latter was mounted on tracked, self-propelled undercarriages, thus creating what were effectively turretless tanks useful both for tank hunting and for close support). To permit all these various troops to cooperate with one another, the Germans added signal troops (they were the first to develop a comprehensive mobile communication system based on two-way radio) as well as a headquarters. Thus, they created the first armoured divisions, which from 1940 became the very symbol of military might.

Changes in command

As armoured tactics developed, the position of the commander as well as the role he played in battle changed. Primitive and ancient commanders, with the partial exception of Roman ones, normally took an active part in the fighting. They and their medieval successors delivered and received blows themselves as a matter of course, with the result that they were sometimes wounded, as was Alexander the Great, or taken prisoner, as was Francis I of France at Pavia in 1525. However, during the second half of the 16th century bureaucratic means of government began to take over from feudalism, and changing social mores no longer required that rulers fight in person. The switch from hand weapons to firearms itself permitted better control, causing commanders to put more emphasis on directing combat and less on participating in it. Increasingly they were to be found not in the midst of their troops but well to the rear, standing on a hill. After about 1650 they could use a “spying glass,” or telescope, in order to distinguish their units (newly clothed in uniform) from one another and from the enemy. To communicate their intentions to subordinates they would rely on messengers—and indeed it was in this period that the modern aide-de-camp made his appearance.

An important 19th-century development consisted of electric communication in the form of the telegraph and, later, the telephone. Replacing mounted messengers with the infinitely faster wire made it possible to exercise active command even with armies very far apart and, equally significant, with armies distant from headquarters, located far to the rear. As a result, distances between field commanders—to say nothing of commanders in chief—and their troops tended to increase until they could be measured in miles and even tens of miles. Commanders and their staffs left the field for the office, getting their information by reading reports and bending over maps rather than peering between their horses’ ears. After 1860 the old expression coup d’oeil, which implied a commander “casting a glance” over the battlefield and making his decision on the spot, was replaced by “estimate of the situation,” with its connotation of cooler deliberation. The point was reached when, during World War I, commanders from division level up seldom visited the front; nor would the six-foot-deep trenches, screened by concertina in front, have allowed them to take a good look at the enemy even if they had visited it. Moreover, wired communication systems were basically immobile, and efforts to protect them by burying them in the ground tended to make them even more so. In this way they acted as another factor that favoured the defense over the offense.

As commanders came to rely on the wireless communications developed between the world wars, they were able to forsake their headquarters and take to modified tanks, half-tracks, trucks, or even jeeps, which were distinguished from other such vehicles merely by the forest of antennas that they carried. In this way they were able to see the front for themselves and provide leadership at decisive points, all the while keeping in touch with other sectors of the front as well as rear headquarters. In his memoirs, Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied forces during World War II, wrote that soldiers usually welcomed his visits because these meant that there was no danger in sight; but other commanders in that conflict, such as Heinz Guderian, Erwin Rommel, George S. Patton, and even Bernard Montgomery (while still merely an army commander) operated in a very different manner from their World War I predecessors. Instead of ensconcing themselves in châteaus, they roamed all over the theatre of war, not seldom taking to the air and covering hundreds of miles in a single day. Regarded from this point of view, radio helped to reverse a secular trend that had been unfolding for centuries, enabling those who knew how to use it to bring about a revolution in command. But for this, modern armoured operations as pioneered in World War II would have been impossible.

Limitations of the tank

Air forces assisted armoured formations during World War II by providing reconnaissance, interdiction, and close support, as well as putting down airborne troops in front of advancing spearheads when the occasion demanded. Between 1939 and 1942, this method of making war led to brilliant victories equal to any in history. Later, though, it became increasingly clear that there were certain limits to the armoured offensive. Since railways were too inflexible for the purpose, armoured divisions depended on motor convoys for the bulk of their supplies. These convoys themselves made extraordinary demands for fuel, maintenance, and spare parts, with the result that even the most carefully planned, brilliantly led armoured thrusts tended to lose momentum once their spearheads had reached 200 to 250 miles from base. Such an operational reach sufficed to bring down medium-size countries such as Poland and France but not a continent-size country such as the Soviet Union, which was also distinguished by a terrible road system. When the attacker did not enjoy air superiority, as often happened to the Allies before 1942 and to the Germans after that year, the logistic “tails” on which blitzkrieg tactics depended proved very vulnerable to attack by fighter-bombers. Occasionally, as at ʿAlam al-Halfaʾ in 1942 and again during the German counterattacks in Normandy in 1944, air power was able to halt armoured thrusts almost on its own.

Moreover, tanks, originally conceived as offensive instruments, turned out to be at least equally useful on the defense, especially when dug into the ground in “hull-down” positions and deployed with other weapons and field fortifications such as antitank ditches, mines, and barbed wire. Such a combination presented almost insuperable obstacles to the attacker, whose forces would be caught in a maze, cut into penny packets, and lured into killing grounds. Also, as other countries built up their armoured forces in imitation of the Germans, great tank-to-tank battles sometimes took place; but even here the visions of theorists such as J.F.C. Fuller, who had predicted all-tank armies maneuvering against each other like navies at sea, were seldom, if ever, realized. Even in North Africa, with its absolutely open terrain, victory usually went to the side that better knew how to combine armour with other arms such as artillery, antitank artillery, infantry, and, paradoxically, the very engineers whose efforts armour had originally been designed to overcome. From at least 1942, combined-arms warfare became the order of the day, and it remained so for decades to come.

Finally, the tank was not suited for every kind of terrain. Like the cavalry of old, armoured warfare was most effective in broad, open plains like those of northern France, the western Sahara, and southern Russia. In mountainous, forested, swampy, or built-up terrain, the role that tanks could play was necessarily limited, both because of diminished trafficability and because there was insufficient room for them to deploy. Though there were exceptions (witness the brilliant German stroke through the Ardennes in 1940), often tanks were of no use at all—or else they were reduced to supporting the infantry, as happened in Italy and, later, Korea. Since the tanks’ rotating turrets had to absorb the recoil of their guns, these were usually smaller in calibre than ordinary field cannon, so that, employed as artillery, tanks were costly and only moderately effective. Thus, armoured warfare was able to achieve its full potential only in certain theatres. In many others, including Southeast Asia and the Pacific, the role of tanks was more limited, and the old combination of infantry and artillery, now also supported by the air force, usually prevailed.

From conventional war to terrorism

Nuclear weapons

On Aug. 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. From this point, all warfare was destined to be overshadowed by nuclear weapons, devices so powerful as to turn even the mightiest conventional forces into negligible, almost risible, quantities. In theatres where nuclear weapons were present in numbers, such as Europe and Korea, conventional warfare was brought to a dead halt. All attempts to devise ways for fighting in a nuclear environment came to nought, so that the preparations made for it (for example, in the Western doctrine of flexible response) took on a make-believe character and were forced to proceed as if nuclear weapons did not exist. As the strategic nuclear forces of the principal military powers neutralized one another, it was only among—or against—small, unimportant countries that war could be carried on more or less as before. Even then, after about 1970 it became clear that any country in possession of the industrial, scientific, and logistic infrastructure needed to build strong conventional forces would also be able eventually to develop both the bomb and the delivery vehicles it required.

Continued growth of military technology

In spite of its many disadvantages, as listed above, the armoured division continued for several decades following World War II as the very symbol of military might. Immense fortunes were invested in developing, producing, and deploying successive generations of fighting vehicles, especially tanks. On the whole, the weight of tanks, their engine power, and the calibre of their guns trebled between 1940 and 1985, although there were considerable variations in the balancing of armour, armament, and propulsion. The new models incorporated numerous novel features such as stabilized turrets, electronic fire controls, and automatic damage-suppression systems. Nevertheless, in the end tanks remained recognizably what they had been before.

The development of other major weapon systems tended to progress pari passu with that of tanks—and indeed many of them were specifically designed to accompany, assist, or counter them. In order to keep up with their tanks, the most advanced armies became completely motorized. As vehicles for transporting troops, trucks were replaced by armoured personnel carriers; these gave way in turn to armoured fighting vehicles, from which troops could fight without dismounting and some of which were almost as heavy and expensive as tanks. In the rear services, horse-drawn vehicles, which in both the Soviet and German armies had still been in the majority until 1945, disappeared altogether. Consequently, with the bulk of supplies still carried by trucks, the dependence of post-World War II armies on roads was as great as, and possibly greater than, that of their predecessors.

Besides fielding more powerful tanks, troop carriers, and artillery tubes, post-1945 ground forces also introduced entire families of weapons that were absolutely new and unprecedented. Among the earliest were guided antitank missiles, which entered production during the late 1950s but came into their own only with the Arab-Israeli War of October 1973. Short- and medium-range surface-to-surface missiles extended the range of artillery, which was itself increased by providing rounds with added rocket propulsion. Of the missiles, those designed for attacking tanks at short range (two miles or less) proved most effective, forcing armoured divisions to reorganize themselves in order to make possible still closer cooperation between tanks and other arms. Contrary to original hopes, however, they did not bring about either considerable savings in ammunition or relief to logistic systems, the reason being that the standard response to them was to cover every place from which they might be launched with suppressive fire. By and large, the other surface-to-surface missiles were insufficiently accurate, or their warheads too small, to play a decisive role against opposing forces in the field.

In addition to the traditional high explosive, the various new missiles were provided with guidance and homing systems and carried new and powerful warheads such as cluster bomblets and fuel-air explosive. Other missiles were designed for entirely new tasks, such as rapidly scattering large numbers of minelets in front of an advancing opponent. Such tasks presupposed very accurate information on the movements of an opponent who would still be rather far away and, presumably, capable of rapid movement. To provide such information in so-called real time, growing reliance was placed on electronic sensors and remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs). After becoming familiar in the Vietnam War, where they failed to penetrate the triple-canopy jungle, RPVs became suddenly famous after successful employment by the Israelis in Lebanon in 1982. Launched from mobile platforms and operated by units down to the division level, subsequent generations of RPVs were capable of carrying out surveillance, target acquisition, damage assessment, electronic warfare, and even attacks on enemy radars (when provided with homing devices and explosive warheads).

As the jet engine replaced the piston engine in the 1950s and ’60s, most aircraft became too fast and unmaneuverable to provide effective close support to ground forces. At the same time, the power of antiaircraft defenses, in the form of missiles and radar-guided, multiple-barrel automatic cannon, increased by leaps and bounds. The Vietnam War and the 1973 Arab-Israeli War demonstrated, each in its own way, the limits of air power in the tactical role, and the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, in which the Israeli air force won a spectacular victory in the sky without decisively affecting the ground battle, provided even stronger proof. Accordingly, there was a tendency to equip aircraft with long-range guided weapons that would enable them to “stand off” from antiaircraft defenses, and these weapons were used to great effect against Iraq in 1991 in the Persian Gulf war. For close support, increasing reliance was placed on smaller, more agile attack helicopters. The first massive use of helicopters in the air-to-ground role was in Vietnam, where the enemy was generally much too small and dispersed to be effectively tackled by faster craft. Machines armed with guns and missiles specifically designed for “tank busting” entered service during the mid-1970s.

The end of technological warfare

Individually, the heavy weapons developed and fielded after 1945 were much more powerful than their predecessors and, thanks to their electronics, capable of hitting faster-moving targets at longer ranges and with greater accuracy. Nevertheless, and in spite of endless talk about the revolutionary changes in warfare brought about by these new arms, the operational art on land stagnated. For 40 years after World War II, the greatest problem confronting Warsaw Pact armies was how to imitate the Wehrmacht and mount a super blitzkrieg aimed at overrunning Europe; simultaneously, the greatest problem confronting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was how to stop such a blitzkrieg in its tracks. As a result, the great military theorists who pioneered the doctrines of armoured warfare during the 1920s and ’30s had no successors of similar stature. Their place was taken by nuclear strategists, whose most important concern was not how to fight a war but how to prevent it from breaking out.

In fact, after 1945 there were only two successful blitzkriegs against worthwhile opponents. The first took place in the Arab-Israeli War of 1967; not accidentally, this saw the use by both sides of many tanks, half-tracks, artillery, and other weapons taken straight out of World War II. The second blitzkrieg was launched at the end of the Persian Gulf war of 1990–91, when the Iraqis, after weeks of saturation bombing, put up so little resistance that only four of the most advanced U.S. tanks were disabled—and none by enemy fire. The October 1973 Arab-Israeli War, by contrast, pointed to the limitations of armoured forces, which suffered high casualties when employed against determined infantry carrying modern antitank weapons or when used as offensive instruments against other armoured forces.

All in all, military forces in the second half of the 20th century were characterized by an unprecedented faith in, and drive for, technology. More and more, land armies deployed their firepower—and their money—in the form of heavy, motorized, crew-operated weapon systems. If only because of their greatly extended ranges, these systems increasingly relied on electronic means for target acquisition, identification, range finding, and aiming. Indeed, the time was to come when the number and quality of electronic gadgets employed by armies became the best possible index of their modernity. However, such devices and their attendant computers operated best of all in simple environments, such as sea and air; in some ways, the most favourable environment of all was outer space, where there was nothing to fight about. Conversely, the more complex the environment, the less reliable and useful modern electronics became, since very often they either gave out the wrong signal or none at all.

The net effect of these factors did not take long to make itself felt. While it became clear that modern armies could inflict enormous attrition on each other, their reliance on long-range, crew-operated, and motorized heavy weapons (and the electronics that these incorporated) also brought about a decrease in those armies’ ability to fight opponents that did not resemble themselves—particularly opponents that deliberately chose to operate in complicated terrain, including above all civilian populations and their habitats, communication networks, and means of production. As the Germans in World War II had already learned, in such environments modern weapons, by virtue of their very power, did more harm than good. Panzers and dive-bombers could slice through fronts, defeat armies, and overrun countries, but holding those countries down in the face of hit-and-run guerrilla and terrorist attacks was a different matter altogether and could be achieved, if at all, only by old-fashioned infantry.

After 1945 a similar experience was had by virtually every modern army belonging to both developed and developing countries: fighting against organizations other than regular, state-owned armies, they almost always went down to defeat. Technological superiority did not help the French prevail over the Viet Minh in Indochina or the fellaghas in Algeria any more than it enabled the British to defeat Irgun Zvai Leumi in Palestine, the Mau Mau in Kenya, or EOKA in Cyprus. The Soviets in 1979 and the Israelis in 1982 found it easy to overrun Afghanistan and Lebanon, respectively; however, their initial victories proved not so much useless as irrelevant to the final outcome of these wars. The Cubans in Angola (1975–91), the South Africans in Namibia (1975–89), the Indians in Sri Lanka (1987–90), and even the tough Vietnamese in Cambodia (1979–89) all learned the same lesson. In most such cases the insurgents scarcely deployed anything heavier than antitank rockets, machine guns, and light mortars, but often they did not even have those; yet their tactics forced the regular armies to withdraw, sometimes after driving them to the point of complete breakdown, as happened to the Americans in Vietnam. The limitations of conventional forces, their weapon systems, and their methods of making war were highlighted by the fact that conflicts of this kind were far more numerous than conventional ones during the post-1945 period. They also produced by far the most important political results, to say nothing of the number of casualties.

As the 20th century approached its end, there were abundant signs that large-scale, interstate, conventional operations of war had been caught in a vise between nuclear weapons on the one hand and low-intensity operations on the other. In places where nuclear weapons were present—even where the threat was undeclared, as between India and Pakistan or between Israel and its immediate neighbours—such operations were much too dangerous to be attempted. In other places (actually the great majority), where the threat came not from state-owned armies but from other types of organizations with no clear territorial base, conventional warfare was largely useless. Low-intensity warfare had no room for tactics as normally understood and in fact seemed likely to cause them to disappear—that is, to merge with politics and propaganda on the one hand and with terrorism and intimidation on the other. This meant that, even as vast sums continued to be spent on modern conventional weapons and the armies fielding them, the kind of war for which those armies and those weapons were designed seemed to be coming to an end and might, indeed, already have ended. (For further discussion, see guerrilla warfare.)

Martin van Creveld

More About Tactics

3 references found in Britannica articles

Assorted References

    Britannica Kids
    You have successfully emailed this.
    Error when sending the email. Try again later.
    Edit Mode
    Tips For Editing




    Thank You for Your Contribution!



    Uh Oh


    Keep Exploring Britannica

    Email this page