Modern warfare
In its widest sense, it includes all warfare since the "gunpowder revolution" that marks the start of early modern warfare, but other landmark military developments have been used instead, including the emphasis of artillery marked by the Crimean War, the military reliance on railways beginning with the American Civil War, the launch of the first dreadnought in 1905, or the use of the machine gun, aircraft, tank, or radio in World War I.
Chemical warfare nerve agents are potent anticholinesterase compounds deliberately formulated to induce debilitating effects or death during wartime hostilities.
A key need for both community emergency preparedness, and restoration of military installations where agents have been processed and/or stored, is access to concise and timely information on agent characteristics and treatment, as well as health-based exposure guidelines derived in a clear manner by contemporary methods of data analysis.
The simplest definition includes any war in which one of the major participants is not a state but rather a violent ideological network.
In urban areas, because of smaller space, an armored vehicle is exposed to hidden enemy infantry but as the so-called "Thunder Run"[clarification needed] at Baghdad in 2003 showed, armored vehicles can play a critical role in urban combat.
Guerrilla warfare has played a significant role in modern history, especially when waged by Communist liberation movements in Southeast Asia (most notably in the Vietnam War) and elsewhere.
Psychological actions have the primary purpose of influencing the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of hostile foreign groups in such a way as to support the achievement of national objectives.
Some examples of this type of warfare are electronic "sniffers" which disrupt international fund-transfer networks as well as the signals of television and radio stations.
Modern navies primarily use aircraft carriers, submarines, frigates, cruisers, and destroyers for combat.
This developed in the Vietnam War into riverine warfare (brown water navy), in intertidal and river areas.
Weapons platforms, sensors, and command and control centers are being connected through high-speed communication networks.
The overall network which enables this strategy in the United States military is called the Global Information Grid.
New generation warfare is a Russian military theory of unconventional warfare based on the Gerasimov doctrine which prioritizes the psychological and people-centered aspects over traditional military concerns, and emphasizes a phased approach of non-military influence such that armed conflict, if it arises, is much less costly in human or economic terms.
In a limited nuclear war, a small number of weapons are used in a tactical exchange aimed primarily at enemy combatants.
In a full-scale nuclear war, large numbers of weapons are used in an attack aimed at entire countries.
Notably no real weapons exist in space yet, though ground-to-space missiles have been successfully tested against target satellites.
