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.