Military

Beyond warfare, the military may be employed in additional sanctioned and non-sanctioned functions within the state, including internal security threats, crowd control, promotion of political agendas, emergency services and reconstruction, protecting corporate economic interests, social ceremonies, and national honour guards.

The first Emperor of a unified China, Qin Shi Huang, created the Terracotta Army to represent his military might.

[3] The Ancient Romans wrote many treatises and writings on warfare, as well as many decorated triumphal arches and victory columns.

[5][6] As a noun phrase, "the military" usually refers generally to a country's armed forces, or sometimes, more specifically, to the senior officers who command them.

While senior officers make strategic decisions, subordinated military personnel (soldiers, sailors, marines, or airmen) fulfil them.

[15] Whereas recruits who join as officers tend to be upwardly-mobile,[16][17] most enlisted personnel have a childhood background of relative socio-economic deprivation.

After leaving the armed forces, recruits may remain liable for compulsory return to full-time military employment in order to train or deploy on operations.

[26] Military personnel in some countries have a right of conscientious objection if they believe an order is immoral or unlawful, or cannot in good conscience carry it out.

Initial training conditions recruits for the demands of military life, including preparedness to injure and kill other people, and to face mortal danger without fleeing.

Capability development, which is often referred to as the military 'strength', is arguably one of the most complex activities known to humanity; because it requires determining: strategic, operational, and tactical capability requirements to counter the identified threats; strategic, operational, and tactical doctrines by which the acquired capabilities will be used; identifying concepts, methods, and systems involved in executing the doctrines; creating design specifications for the manufacturers who would produce these in adequate quantity and quality for their use in combat; purchase the concepts, methods, and systems; create a forces structure that would use the concepts, methods, and systems most effectively and efficiently; integrate these concepts, methods, and systems into the force structure by providing military education, training, and practice that preferably resembles combat environment of intended use; create military logistics systems to allow continued and uninterrupted performance of military organizations under combat conditions, including provision of health services to the personnel, and maintenance for the equipment; the services to assist recovery of wounded personnel, and repair of damaged equipment; and finally, post-conflict demobilization, and disposal of war stocks surplus to peacetime requirements.

[36] The line between strategy and tactics is not easily blurred, although deciding which is being discussed had sometimes been a matter of personal judgement by some commentators, and military historians.

The primary reason for the existence of the military is to engage in combat, should it be required to do so by the national defence policy, and to win.

[36] Operational mobility is, within warfare and military doctrine, the level of command which coordinates the minute details of tactics with the overarching goals of strategy.

Military tactics are usually used by units over hours or days, and are focused on the specific tasks and objectives of squadrons, companies, battalions, regiments, brigades, and divisions, and their naval and air force equivalents.

Taktike Theoria examined Greek military tactics, and was most influential in the Byzantine world and during the Golden Age of Islam.

Perhaps its most enduring maxim is Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum (let he who desires peace prepare for war).

The meaning of military tactics has changed over time; from the deployment and manoeuvring of entire land armies on the fields of ancient battles, and galley fleets; to modern use of small unit ambushes, encirclements, bombardment attacks, frontal assaults, air assaults, hit-and-run tactics used mainly by guerrilla forces, and, in some cases, suicide attacks on land and at sea.

With each technological change was realized some tangible increase in military capability, such as through greater effectiveness of a sharper edge in defeating armour, or improved density of materials used in manufacture of weapons.On land, the first significant technological advance in warfare was the development of ranged weapons, notably the sling and later the bow and arrow.

Possibly the most significant advancement was the wheel, a staple of transportation, starting with the chariot and eventually siege engines.

The use of gunpowder in the early vase-like mortars in Europe, and advanced versions of the longbow and crossbow with armour-piercing arrowheads, put an end to the dominance of the armoured knight.

In time, the successors to muskets and cannons, in the form of rifles and artillery, would become core battlefield technology.As the speed of technological advances accelerated in civilian applications, so too did military and warfare become industrialized.

The newly invented machine gun and repeating rifle redefined firepower on the battlefield, and, in part, explains the high casualty rates of the American Civil War and the decline of melee combat in warfare.

The widespread introduction of low smoke (smokeless) propellant powders since the 1880s also allowed for a great improvement of artillery ranges.

The development of breech loading had the greatest effect on naval warfare for the first time since the Middle Ages, altering the way weapons are mounted on warships.

Military aviation was extensively used, and bombers became decisive in many battles of World War II, which marked the most frantic period of weapons development in history.

Perhaps the most infamous of all military technologies was the creation of nuclear weapons, although the exact effects of its radiation were unknown until the early 1950s.

More recently, information technology, and its use in surveillance, including space-based reconnaissance systems, have played an increasing role in military operations.

Militarist ideology is the society's social attitude of being best served, or being a beneficiary of a government, or guided by concepts embodied in the military culture, doctrine, system, or leaders.

An early exponent was Hugo Grotius, whose On the Law of War and Peace (1625) had a major impact of the humanitarian approach to warfare development.

Ethics of warfare have developed since 1945, to create constraints on the military treatment of prisoners and civilians, primarily by the Geneva Conventions; but rarely apply to use of the military forces as internal security troops during times of political conflict that results in popular protests and incitement to popular uprising.