Industrial Warfare - Land Warfare

Land Warfare

Land warfare, as the name implies, takes place on land. The most common type of warfare, it can encompass several modes and locales, including urban, arctic and mountain warfare.

The early part of the nineteenth century from 1815 to 1848 saw a long period of peace in Europe, accompanied by extraordinary industrial expansion. The industrial age brought about various technological advancements, each with their own implication. Land warfare moved from visual-range and semi person-to-person combat of the previous era, to indiscriminate and impersonal, "beyond visual range" warfare. The Crimean War (1853-1856) saw the introduction of trench warfare, long-range artillery, railroads, the telegraph and the rifle. The mechanized mass-destruction of enemy combatants grew ever more deadly: in World War I (1914-1918) machine-guns, barbed wire, chemical weapons and land-mines entered the battlefield. The deadly stalemated trench-warfare stage was finally passed with the advent of the modern armored tank late in the First World War.

One major trend involved the transition away from massed infantry fire and human waves to more refined tactics. This became possible with the superseding of earlier weapons like the highly inaccurate musket.