Machinery of War

From the beginning of the twentieth century to today, war was radically transformed. Through mechanization and industrialization, the methods used to settle conflicts have made the art of war more hi-tech, more expensive, and more devastating than ever before. Violence, it seems, is the mother of invention. This six-part series explores the evolution of engineering in warfare; as glamorous cavalry units were forced from the battlefields and replaced with tanks. As artillery entered the realms of science fiction and even the infantryman became a lethal weapons system. This mechanization of war demanded the rapid growth of armaments factories, all competing to build weapons bigger, better, faster, and deadlier. In the twentieth century war took over the skies, biplanes evolved into drones and randomly dropped bombs into pinpoint weapons that can level entire cities. Naval combat has also been revolutionized, where the most potent weapons are now launched from the angled decks of ...