Weaponry, Evolution of
Weaponry, Evolution of.Weapons are instruments designed to harm, kill, or otherwise disable other human beings, to destroy other military resources, or to deter an enemy's ability to make war through the actual or threatened destruction of crucial components of their society. Broadly conceived, weapons include not only the instruments themselves and their munitions but also their delivery vehicles—so‐called weapons platforms: tanks, ships, aircraft, missile launchers. Today, the combinations are often labeled weapons systems.
Because weapons, like other physical objects, operate under natural laws, discoveries in chemistry, physics, quantum mechanics, and other areas of science and technology have helped propel both the industrial revolution and the dramatic expansion of weaponry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Thus, as shown in the accompanying articles on the development of weaponry in the army, marine corps, navy,...
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