Military science

“ With full allowance for changes in army and battle formation, tactical action and armament, as well as greater facilities for the transportation of troops and army supplies, it remains true that the relative effect of all these changes upon success in war upon a grand scale, has not been the modification of those principles of military science which have shaped battle action and the general conduct of war, from the earliest period of authentic military history. ”

“ Another great section of the community, the military element, will also fall within the attraction of this possible synthesis, and will inevitably undergo profound modification. Of the probable development of warfare a later chapter shall treat, and here it will suffice to point out that at present science stands proffering the soldier vague, vast possibilities of mechanism, and, so far, he has accepted practically nothing but rifles which he cannot sight and guns that he does not learn to move about. ”

“ Perhaps the general passion for science has led to an overstrained teaching for the army, even for its scientific corps; and yet would it be allowed by officers of the highest scientific ability, either in the French or the English army, that less science is required for the greatest emergencies of military than for those of civil engineering, or for the theory of projectiles than for working the department of saltpetre? ”

“ It is a science so far as it investigates general principles and institutes an analysis of military operations; and an art when considered with reference to the practical rules for conducting campaigns, sieges, battles, &c. So is engineering a science so far as it investigates the general principles of fortification, and also artillery, in analyzing the principles of gunnery; but both are arts when considered with reference to the practical rules for the construction, attack, and defence of forts, or for the use of cannon. ”

“ But an unofficial body that set itself to the establishment of a school of military science, to the sane organization and criticism of military experiments in tactics and equipment, and to the raising for experimental purposes of volunteer companies and battalions, would find no lack of men.... ”

“ But the importance of maintaining in our military organization a suitable system of military instruction is not confined to the exigencies of our actual condition. It mainly rests upon the absolute necessity of having in the country a body of men who shall devote themselves to the cultivation of military science, so as to be able to compete with the military science of the transatlantic powers. ”

“ Further, the State is bound to enlist in its service all the discoveries of modern science, so far as they can be applied to warfare, since all these methods and engines of war, should they be exclusively in the hands of the enemy, would secure him a distinct superiority. It is an obvious necessity to keep the forces which can be put into the field as up-to-date as possible, and to facilitate their military operations by every means which science and mechanical skill supply. ”

“ But independent of any connection with the profession of arms, or of any of the foregoing considerations, I consider a scientific knowledge of the military art, as constituting a very important part of the education of every individual engaged in the pursuit of useful knowledge, and this for many reasons ”

“ It would be out of place here to enumerate or describe in any detail the service of science in this war, but when the history of the struggle comes to be written it will be found that the masters of the chemical and physical sciences have thrown their talents and their ingenuity into the service, that their researches have been at the very basis of military progress, and that the victory rests as much upon a nation's supremacy in the researches and adaptations of science as it does upon the number and valor of its soldiers. ”

“ It is only through founding the art of war—the application of the science of war to actual military situations—on the fundamental truths discovered through the science of war, that changes in method, due to technological evolution, can be made most effective. ”

“ Our whole coast involves the most complicated difficulties in defense, and all the highest range of science in war is required to make that defense successful. Feeling the greatest confidence in your abilities, and well knowing that this position is well suited to your peculiar talents and scientific knowledge, it affords me the greatest pleasure to co-operate with you in anything that you may suggest, and to offer you all the resources of the State that I may be able to command. ”

“ Developmental research consists of that research which creates new weapons, new methods of war, new devices or procedures, doing so by digging through modern science, investigating its applicability to military problems, and then advancing the frontier of science, when necessary, in the military interest. The goals of operations research are more modest and, in some respect, more provocative. ”

“ For example, the space science activities cover the frontiers of almost all the major areas of the physical sciences, and these activities thus provide support of the physical sciences in specific applications in the fields of electronics, materials, propulsion, etc., will contribute, directly or indirectly, to all subsequent military weapons developments and to many unforeseen civilian applications. ”

“ Third, to keep our armed forces abreast of the advances of science, our military planning must be flexible enough to utilize the new weapons and techniques which flow ever more speedily from our research and development programs. ”

“ But gunnery takes a yet far more extensive range; for it may be said to be based upon nearly every branch of the mathematical and physical sciences, and may be itself considered as a science requiring the most intricate combinations of human knowledge and mechanical ingenuity fully to comprehend and perfect. ”

“ The great improvements made in the art of war in modern times, in weapons, drill, discipline, etc., has made warfare more of a science and less of a trial of brute force than formerly, and hence the necessity for a body of trained officers capable of moving, directing, and bringing into effective operation all the appliances of war with which modern armies are furnished. ”

“ Preparation for war among such nations requires not only the forming and training of the army, but vast provision in many various ways of the means and matériel of war. Much science and skill are also applied to the conduct of military operations, and the principles upon which they ought to be conducted have been carefully investigated and theories tested by an examination of the history of the most important campaigns. ”

“ A positive system of tactics will therefore be based upon one’s own drill regulations, from the standpoint of which it will investigate and compare the principles of the service manuals of the different powers, and finally develop the science still further by the aid of experience gained from military history and the knowledge of the effect of weapons. ”

“ They may indeed assist our military education, in a manner which the true sense of the term “sound general education” expresses, by encouraging preliminary tastes and studies, such as general history, mathematics, and modern languages, English included, to a greater extent than they do at present. But if there is such a thing as a science of war at all, it stands to reason that it can only be taught fully in cases where young officers have the passion and the capacity to begin it early, by its own teachers, and in its own place. ”

“ Conclusion.—The facts which we have surveyed in early chapters, and the development foreshadowed above, form part of a much wider subject, for they are but one aspect of scientific warfare. In what main directions has science modified or revolutionised modern war? ”

“ Such an observer must possess a fairly complete theoretical knowledge of the science and art of war. He must be informed as to topographic conditions, not only at the immediate scene of combat, but in all directions wherever new lines of offense or defense could be established. He must know thoroughly conditions of transportation, provisioning, armaments, offensive and defensive, powers, ranges, etc., of ordnance and small arms of combatants, and not only available present supplies, but resources, near and remote, of every possible kind. ”

“ In future wars, if any such should occur, trained personnel will be of even greater importance than it was in the Great War, because the advance of science increases constantly the importance of the highly trained individual, and if nothing else is certain it can surely be predicted that science will play an increasing part in warfare in the future. ”

“ I find myself wholly unable to admit that either nations or individuals will really advance, if their common outfit draws nothing from the stores of physical science. I should say that an army, without weapons of precision and with no particular base of operations, might more hopefully enter upon a campaign on the Rhine, than a man, devoid of a knowledge of what physical science has done in the last century, upon a criticism of life. ”

“ The influence of improvements in all kinds of weapons and machinery of war is further and further to complicate strategics. The more that invention, science, and discovery are employed in the development and perfection of implements of war, the more the use of those implements requires high inventive genius and high scientific skill. ”

“ War has now evolved into a science, most complex, many-sided, and embracing practically all the other sciences. As instruments of warfare become more and more intricate, volunteer forces become less and less efficient. ”

“ As an applied science, war is half human, half mechanical; it is, therefore, pre-eminently a live or dynamic science, a science which must grow with human understanding itself, so that its means of action, materialised in the soldier, may not only keep level with progress but absorb it to its own particular ends. ”

“ Once, when the winning of wars depended on swordsmen, archers, and cavalry, there were mercenary companies, that sold their training to the highest bidder. Today, more and more, wars are won or lost by science—and a scientific team. ”

“ Every branch of Engineering has the same story to tell. You all know what a vital force was scientific engineering in the great war. The Germans had the first advantage, largely because for a generation they had devoted the energies of a large proportion of their scientific men to the devices of military engineering. ”

“ The military technicalist, be he an expert in ballistics or in explosives or in metallurgy or in electrical communications or in any other form of scientific knowledge, is a very valuable member of the martial community. But he is a little inclined to get into a groove. He stood in some need of being stirred up from outside during the Great War, and he must learn that he is subordinate to the General Staff. ”

“ In the first case the military empiric may be equal to the occasion; the second case demands imperatively a scientifically educated General and a staff who have also studied and mastered for themselves the nature of modern warfare. ”

“ If we look upon scholars, historians, students of physical science, and abstract philosophers, as so many branches of the great army of knowledge which has been fighting its way for centuries for the conquest of truth, it might be said, if we may follow up our comparison a little further, that the light cavalry of physical science had lately made a quick movement in advance, and detached itself too much from the support of the infantry and heavy artillery. ”

“ Further than this, we believe that those nations which have proved their ability in the past as leaders of science and mechanical engineering will in the future be those which will produce the most efficient armies, for these armies will be based on the foundations of the commercial sciences. ”

“ In preparing for war, the only practicable peacetime tests are usually restricted to those afforded by examples of the past, by problems such as chart (map) and board maneuvers, and by fleet and field exercises. While the [2] military profession can afford to neglect none of them, such tests can never be conclusive. This fact, however, far from justifying resort to any other procedure, emphasizes the necessity for utilization of the scientific method in order to arrive at conclusions which are as exact as possible. ”

“ For the first class military engineering, ordnance, and gunnery, constitutional law, military law, rules of evidence, practice of courts-martial, mineralogy, and geology, strategy, and grand tactics, and the throwing and dismantling of pontoon bridges. For the second class, acoustics and optics, astronomy, analytical mechanics in review; infantry, artillery, and cavalry tactics; drawing, riding, and signalling. For the third class, calculus, surveying, geometry, and riding. ”

“ The principles of the science of tactics remain constant, but the system adopted necessarily varies as new weapons are invented; the problem before us, therefore, was how to apply the principles to modern conditions. ”

“ But while these youths spent much time on drill and training they also were expected to keep up their other studies. For this was a scientific war and demanded for its prosecution men skilled in many branches of learning. The young men were being trained to be not only soldiers but also engineers, chemists, physicians, geologists, physicists, and specialists in many other lines. From their ranks the most promising were selected and sent to military camps for six weeks of a course of rigid and intensive military training in some special line of military service. ”