Military Technology

[steve_bank]

The technological arms race began with the earliest civilizations. I recently watched a show on the evolution of chariot technology and tactics. It focused on major battles between Egypt and Assyria.

Layered body armor that could withstand an arrow goes far back in history.

Ancient Chinese developed an automatic crossbow. Load a magazine wiyh arrows, an early 'ache gun'. It was mass produced.

I think moren warfare is thought to have begun at the end of the Civil War era, guns were manufactured with tight enough tolerance to have interchangeable parts, mass production of rifles.

Then the Maxim machine gun.

In the early 20th century Krupp developed the first big artillery guns.

WWI put all together.

WWII was as much a technological war as anything else. It is where electronic warfare began.

A book I read back in the 80s. From the Association Of Old Crows. Crow was the tectonic warfare symbol.

The history of US electronic warfare: price, alfred: Amazon.com: Books

The history of US electronic warfare [price, alfred] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The history of US electronic warfare

www.amazon.com

Radio controlled weapons were developed inn WWII. Frequncy hopping is still one of the techniques to counter jamming.

During WWII, the Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr co-invented a radio-based guidance system for torpedoes that utilized frequency-hopping technology to prevent signal jamming. This invention, patented in 1942, aimed to enhance the effectiveness of radio-controlled torpedoes by making their guidance signals more secure and resistant to enemy interference.

Of course the German ballistic missiles with a gyro guidance system. The V2. It went sub orbital.

An early drone was the German V1 'buzz bomb'. Fuel was timed to run out over a target.

Military technology today is generally advanced versions of WWII technology.

As developed in WWII tactics are based on command and control. Coordinated use of air power, infantry, and mobile armor.

Schwarzkopf in the first Gulf War.

Laser guided weapons were developed in the VN War.

War seems to bring out creativity.

 

[bilby]

An early drone was the German V1 'buzz bomb'. Fuel was timed to run out over a target.

Not so; The guidance system was much more advanced than that. It had a small airscrew that measured distance travelled, and could be set before launch to determine the range. The design intent was that the bomb would then dive onto the target, but the system gave the elevators a rapid transition to maximum downward deflection, and this disrupted the pulse jet air intake so much that the engine cut off at the top of its dive.

It turned out that the psychological effect of the sudden silence, telling those below that the bomb was coming for them, was so terrifying that the designers kept the flaw.

Directional control was magnetic, and each V1 was taken to a non-ferrous building aligned with the launch ramp and struck with mallets immediately becore launch, so that the bomb's own magnetic field would not change further in flight due to the hammering effect of the pulse jet and the Earth's magnetic field. Only affer this process was the guidance compass installed.

The Germans used local spies as their main source of evidence about the locations of V1 hits; However by that stage in the war, British countetintelligence had captured and turned all of these spies, and made them send false reports that the bombs were over-shooting central London, and harmlessly exploding in the fields of Oxfordshire. in fact, there was a slight tendency to undershoot, and the false intelligence reports caused the Germans to reduce further the set range. Central London and Westminster were spared the majority of the bombs, which instead fell on the working class housing in the southeast.

 

[Swammerdami]

... However by that stage in the war, British countetintelligence had captured and turned all of these spies, and made them send false reports ...

Turning ALL of the spies seems remarkable and very fortuitous. Given that, and given the cracking of naval codes for both Germany and Japan, and given the great deception that misplaced the D-Day assault in Calais, intelligence operations certainly seem to have played a huge role in the Axis' defeat.

But are we really sure that ALL German spies were turned? Might there have been one unknown to MI-5, sending out true reports, but ignored by Hitler because his reports conflicted with the many reports from turned spies?

 

[bilby]

But are we really sure that ALL German spies were turned? Might there have been one unknown to MI-5, sending out true reports, but ignored by Hitler because his reports conflicted with the many reports from turned spies?

It's obviously impossible to ever be 100% certain; But when you are reading your enemy's mail, it is possible to be very confident indeed. GCCS didn't only break naval codes; The broke the tactical code used by the Luftwaffe and Heer, and they had significant success against the strategic and diplomatic codes used by the high command, so they knew who the Abwehr and SD were sending over.

Any hypothetical "independent" spy would have to have been working outside the German intelligence structure, and as such would be unofficial and highly unlikely to be trusted.

In the event, spies arriving in England were under instruction to contact those already there; As these were now working for MI-5, it was not difficult to capture them almost immediately.

Documents from Germany were used, after the war, to confirm that only one spy previously unknown to MI-5 had operated in England during the war, and Engelburtus Fukken (aka Jan Willem Ter Braak), a Dutch national, had killed himself in 1941, after running out of money.

Could there have been others? It's not impossible, but at this point in time, with most of the documents from the period long since declassified, it seems very unlikely indeed.