Military Science - History

History

Even until the Second World War, military science was written in English starting with capital letters, and was thought of as an academic discipline alongside Physics, Philosophy and the Medical Science. In part this was due to the general mystique that accompanied education in a World where as late as 1880s 75% of the European population was illiterate. The ability by the officers to make complex calculations required for the equally complex "evolutions" of the troop movements in linear warfare that increasingly dominated the Renaissance and later history, and the introduction of the gunpowder weapons into the equation of warfare only added to the veritable arcana of building fortifications as it seemed to the average individual.

Until the early 19th century, one observer, a British veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, Major John Mitchell thought that it seemed nothing much had changed from the application of force on a battlefield since the days of the Greeks. He suggested that this was primarily so because as Clausewitz suggested, "unlike in any other science or art, in war the object reacts".

Until this time, and even after the Franco-Prussian War, military science continued to be divided between the formal thinking of officers brought up in the "shadow" of Napoleonic Wars

Military implements, the supply of an army, its organization, tactics, and discipline, have constituted the elements of military science in all ages; but improvement in weapons and accoutrements appears to lead and control all the rest.

and younger officers like Ardant du Picq who tended to view fighting performance as rooted in the individual's and group psychology and suggested detailed analysis of this. This set in motion the eventual fascination of the military organisations with application of quantitative and qualitative research to their theories of combat; the attempt to translate military thinking as philosophic concepts into concrete methods of combat.

The breakthrough of sorts made by Clausewitz in suggesting eight principles on which such methods can be based, in Europe, for the first time presented an opportunity to largely remove the element of chance and error from command decision making process. At this time emphasis was made on the Topography (including Trigonometry), Military art (Military science), Military history, Organisation of the Army in the field, Artillery and Science of Projectiles, Field fortifications and Permanent fortifications, Military legislation, Military administration and Manoeuvres.

The military science on which the model of German combat operations was built for the First World War remained largely unaltered from the Napoleonic model, but took into the consideration the vast improvements in the firepower and the ability to conduct "great battles of annihilation" through rapid concentration of force, strategic mobility, and the maintenance of the strategic offensive better known as the Cult of the offensive. The key to this, and other modes of thinking about war remained analysis of military history and attempts to derive tangible lessons that could be replicated again with equal success on another battlefield as a sort of bloody laboratory of military science. Few were bloodier than the fields of the Western Front between 1914 and 1918. Fascinatingly the man who probably understood Clausewitz better than most, Marshal Foch would initially participate in events that nearly destroyed the French Army.

It is not however true to say that military theorists and commanders were suffering from some collective case of stupidity; quite the opposite is true. Their analysis of military history convinced them that decisive and aggressive strategic offensive was the only doctrine of victory, and feared that overemphasis of firepower, and the resultant dependence on entrenchment would make this all but impossible, and leading to the battlefield stagnant in advantages of the defensive position, destroying troop morale and willingness to fight. Because only the offensive could bring victory, lack of it, and not the firepower, was blamed for the defeat of the Imperial Russian Army in the Russo-Japanese War. Foch thought that "In strategy as well as in tactics one attacks".

In many ways military science was born as a result of the experiences of the Great War. "Military implements" had changed armies beyond recognition with cavalry to virtually disappear in the next 20 years. The "supply of an army" would become a science of logistics in the wake of massive armies, operations and troops that could fire ammunition faster than it could be produced, for the first time using vehicles that used the combustion engine, a watershed of change. Military "organisation" would no longer be that of the linear warfare, but assault teams, and battalions that were becoming multi-skilled with introduction of machine gun and mortar, and for the first time forcing military commanders to think not only in terms of rank and file, but force structure.

Tactics changed too, with infantry for the first time segregated from the horse-mounted troops, and required to cooperate with tanks, aircraft and new artillery tactics. Perception of military discipline too had changed. Morale, despite strict disciplinarian attitudes, had cracked in all armies during the war, but best performing troops were found to be those where emphasis on discipline had been replaced with display of personal initiative and group cohesiveness such as that found in the Australian Corps during the Hundred Days Offensive. The military sciences' analysis of military history that had failed European commanders was about to give way to a new military science, less conspicuous in appearance, but more aligned to the processes of science of testing and experimentation, the scientific method, and forever "wed" to the idea of the superiority of technology on the battlefield.

Currently military science still means many things to different organisations. In the United Kingdom and much of the European Union the approach is to relate it closely to the civilian application and understanding. The Defence Scientific Advisory Council sees this in terms of the fields of science, engineering, technology and analysis (SETA) that includes broad strategic issues, priorities and policies related to developing military capabilities. In Europe, for example Belgium's Royal Military Academy, military science remains an academic discipline, and is studied alongside Social Sciences, including such subjects as Humanitarian law. The United States Department of Defense defines military science in terms of specific systems and operational requirements, and include among other areas civil defence and force structure.