Curated category
Warfare by type
- Special forcesSpecial forces are military units built for missions that conventional armies cannot, or will not, undertake. The NATO definition is precise: these are…
- Biological warfareBiological warfare is as old as the written record. Hittite texts from somewhere between 1500 and 1200 BC describe victims of a plague being driven…
- Attrition warfareAttrition warfare is built on a single, brutal idea: you do not defeat your enemy in one blow. You grind them down, loss by loss, until they have nothing…
- Land warfareLand warfare is the oldest and most widespread form of organized human violence, fought across every terrain the planet offers, from arctic tundra to desert…
- Chemical warfareChemical warfare carries a moral objection nearly as old as it is. In the 2nd century BC, Roman legions poisoned the water wells of besieged cities in…
- CounterinsurgencyCounterinsurgency is described as the totality of actions aimed at defeating irregular forces. The Oxford English Dictionary frames it more narrowly, as any…
- Trench warfareTrench warfare turned the ground itself into a weapon. A defender crouched in a ditch, shielded from small arms and substantially sheltered from artillery…
- Anti-aircraft warfareOn the 30th of September 1915, troops of the Serbian Army watched three enemy aircraft approach the city of Kragujevac. Soldiers fired at them with shotguns…
- Anti-tank warfareAnti-tank warfare began the moment the tank itself appeared on the Western Front in September 1916. German troops were surprised by the armored machines;…
- Cold war (term)The term "cold war" names a condition most people recognize instantly: two powers locked in hostility, trading threats, money, and spies, but never quite…
- BlitzkriegBlitzkrieg lit up the front pages of Western newspapers in September 1939, when journalists scrambling to describe the German assault on Poland landed on a…
- Submarine warfareSubmarine warfare began, by one account, on the 8th of September 1776. That day, the American submersible Turtle attempted an underwater attack on the…