"War has changed"

So there's this famous quote said by Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid 4 that basically boils down to the three words at the start of the paragraph: "War has changed", as an allusion to the other common, but actually real quote "War never changes".

In the context of the quote itself, it details how in the future MGS4 details, wars have been turned into a never-ending proxy battles by enhanced mercenaries and machines, but to me, it's one of those quotes that could have actually been said by people in history.

Basically, what I'm asking is this: when would be the most fitting time in history for some historical person to come up and say "War has changed"?

Of course, referring to the changes in warfare or in the reasons why war is fought that had happened around them.

When would it fit the best?

After the invention of gunpowder?

During the Napoleonic Wars?

WW1 or WW2?

During the Cold War?

At the beginning of the War on Terror?
 
Very little warfare in cyberwarfare. Stuxnet being the exception, but so far it's still just fancy sabotage.
So is a lot of resource denial in warfare.
I'm wondering if it's becoming a resource denial tactic used in war scenarios as countries reduce troop engagement.
 
I'd say it was the suppression of cavalry starting with the firepower revolution of about 1500, this is what allowed the Russians to expand east, and finishing with WW1. After that war was different from what it had been like for over 2000 years.
 
I'd say it was the suppression of cavalry starting with the firepower revolution of about 1500, this is what allowed the Russians to expand east, and finishing with WW1. After that war was different from what it had been like for over 2000 years.
I'd dispute that. English and Turkish foot archers, and Scots, Flemish and Swiss pikemen, had been ruining thoughtlessly used cavalry's day since the 13-14th century, and cavalry could still be very effective even in head on charges up into the 20th century. Cavalry did slowly become more and more niche, but it wasn't anything so sudden that soldiers, as opposed to historians looking at things in retrospect, would notice.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
In addition to horses, gunpowder and aircraft, I'd argue for atomics as a fourth example. The introduction of nuclear weaponry changed the way that any conflict with a nuclear-armed power must be approached. Without the existence of atomic bombs, the cold war would almost certainly have been a hot war.
 
In addition to horses, gunpowder and aircraft, I'd argue for atomics as a fourth example. The introduction of nuclear weaponry changed the way that any conflict with a nuclear-armed power must be approached. Without the existence of atomic bombs, the cold war would almost certainly have been a hot war.

Nukes have certainly changed geopolitics, hopefully ending superpower wars. But other than not having much direct impact on the battlefield, I'm also not convinced their role in deterence is completely new. They are not fundamentally different from, for example the Mongols gaining submission by threat of massacring whole cities, or perhaps in more primitive societies the threat of cannibalizing a whole village.
 
I think there were three transformations unlike any other that made war unrecognizable.

Horses
Gunpowder
Aircraft

Horses and aircraft I'll grant you, but I don't think gunpowder deserves a place on the same tier. If gunpowder counts, the list should be quite a bit longer.

Until late in its thousand-year history, gunpowder changed war gradually and superficially. Superficially, in that some trends in siege and anti-cavalry weaponry would have continued had gunpowder been absent. But back to on-topic, it was gradual: Barring scenarios involving colonial encounters, dramatic gunpowder-induced transitions in one soldier's lifetime? Not really a thing. Even the more dramatic jumps of the last ~1.5 centuries are more a matter of industrialization than of powder.

Other things that might merit inclusion: industrialized warfare, steam ships, nuclear weapons.
 
Nukes have certainly changed geopolitics, hopefully ending superpower wars. But other than not having much direct impact on the battlefield, I'm also not convinced their role in deterence is completely new. They are not fundamentally different from, for example the Mongols gaining submission by threat of massacring whole cities, or perhaps in more primitive societies the threat of cannibalizing a whole village.

....War is not a sum of battlefields. The battlefield is just an eye-catching symptom.

Honestly, what could affect a war more than not having a war?

Your logic of your comparisons escapes me. Both involve a militarily overwhelming force threatening to systematically destroy a weaker community. How do we square that with North Korea's use of the nuclear deterrent? Or China's? Or Pakistan's?

And given the OP is it relevant anyway, that iron- and stone-age peoples could also make threats of extermination? The question is about war changing visibly within a human lifetime. Was the threat of utter destruction able to prevent war in the 50 years before the Cuban Missile Crisis? Obviously not.
 
Horses and aircraft I'll grant you, but I don't think gunpowder deserves a place on the same tier. If gunpowder counts, the list should be quite a bit longer.

Until late in its thousand-year history, gunpowder changed war gradually and superficially. Superficially, in that some trends in siege and anti-cavalry weaponry would have continued had gunpowder been absent. But back to on-topic, it was gradual: Barring scenarios involving colonial encounters, dramatic gunpowder-induced transitions in one soldier's lifetime? Not really a thing. Even the more dramatic jumps of the last ~1.5 centuries are more a matter of industrialization than of powder.

What's the reason for limiting the time horizon to one mortal's lifetime? It took a long time to domesticate the horse, breed them big enough to ride. The fact remains armies did encounter fully developed cavalry, and fully mature gunpowder weapons and tactics for the first time. Even in Europe contemporary observers did marvel at how gunpowder changed everything by demolishing castles and slaying armored knights with relative ease.

Gunpowder perhaps more than any other should be on this list. The history of war could be broken into before and after the gunpowder revolution, as indeed before and after horses and aircraft came of age.

....War is not a sum of battlefields. The battlefield is just an eye-catching symptom.

Honestly, what could affect a war more than not having a war?

Your logic of your comparisons escapes me. Both involve a militarily overwhelming force threatening to systematically destroy a weaker community. How do we square that with North Korea's use of the nuclear deterrent? Or China's? Or Pakistan's?

And given the OP is it relevant anyway, that iron- and stone-age peoples could also make threats of extermination? The question is about war changing visibly within a human lifetime. Was the threat of utter destruction able to prevent war in the 50 years before the Cuban Missile Crisis? Obviously not.

Eh, I'm not saying nukes aren't important. But deterence is as old as war. Alliances, political hostages, control of vital resources, even terrorism is ancient. Nukes seem to work pretty well, so far.
 

Deleted member 97083

I think there were three transformations unlike any other that made war unrecognizable.

Horses
Gunpowder
Aircraft
In addition to horses, gunpowder and aircraft, I'd argue for atomics as a fourth example. The introduction of nuclear weaponry changed the way that any conflict with a nuclear-armed power must be approached. Without the existence of atomic bombs, the cold war would almost certainly have been a hot war.
Horses and aircraft I'll grant you, but I don't think gunpowder deserves a place on the same tier. If gunpowder counts, the list should be quite a bit longer.

Until late in its thousand-year history, gunpowder changed war gradually and superficially. Superficially, in that some trends in siege and anti-cavalry weaponry would have continued had gunpowder been absent. But back to on-topic, it was gradual: Barring scenarios involving colonial encounters, dramatic gunpowder-induced transitions in one soldier's lifetime? Not really a thing. Even the more dramatic jumps of the last ~1.5 centuries are more a matter of industrialization than of powder.

Other things that might merit inclusion: industrialized warfare, steam ships, nuclear weapons.

Partially agreed. There should be a lot more "change-points". "War never changes" could apply to the human cost of war rather than the technological aspect, but one could argue the human cost has increased massively several times as well.

Technologically, war changed totally and completely, many times over. There are many points in history if you sent a premodern nation back 200 years or a modern nation back 20 years or even 10 years, that its military would become unchallenged superpower.

I would say the following inventions were "War has changed" moments. At least half of these increased casualties by a factor of 2 or 3, if not 10 or more, and necessitated total changes in tactics, strategy, or both.

Cities (made "armies" and "infantry" a thing that existed, created warfare)

Copper (made stone and obsidian weapons obsolete)

Bronze (made pure copper weapons totally obsolete)

Roads (allowed overland supply chains, made "large armies" a thing that existed and needed to be logistically supported)

Chariot archers (revolutionized mobility for the first time, created something other than infantry)

Mounted cavalry (revolutionized mobility again, forced armies to really protect their flanks, made chariots gradually obsolete, made empires rise and fall based on their supply of horses, such as Assyria)

Iron (made most weapons and armor more effective, gradually made bronze obsolete, made empires rise and fall based on their supply of iron, such as Assyria)

Trireme (made "naval tactics" into a thing that existed, allowed for naval invasions for the first time)

Castles (made sieges much, much longer, gave defenders the advantage forever)

Siege engines (forced fortifications to be strong and resilient, and structured intelligently)

Horse archery (revolutionized mobility more than ever before, made sedentary states weaker than pastoralists man-for-man until the 1700s)

Steel (made swordsmen viable as compared to previous spearmen, made mounted knights even more effective than before)

Full body armor (made night invulnerable medieval knights)

Cannons (made stone fortifications almost useless over time)

Caravel (allowed oceanic invasions, allowed blockade)

Arquebus (made gunpowder useful in battle instead of pointless diversion, made kingdoms rise and fall, such as Hungary)

Muskets (made guns the primary infantry weapon and made completely melee armies obsolete, made armored knights obsolete)

Ship-of-the-line (allowed massive naval battles involving dozens of ships, in the middle of the ocean)

Rocket artillery and Napoleonic artillery (allowed arched, long-range cannon fire to devastate fortifications and troop formations with ease, made artillery an actually decisive point in non-siege battles, an artillery officer conquered most of Europe)

Railroad (allowed troop and supply transport faster than ever before. For the first time, battles were weeks long when previously they only lasted a few days)

Rifling (increased casualties of warfare many times over by increasing accuracy)

Telegram (allowed faster communication than ever before and long range coordination of forces)

Machine gun (allowed 2-4 men to kill hundreds from a fortified position, changed infantry tactics completely)

Dreadnought or battleship (allowed for gunboat diplomacy, with naval powers able to enforce demands on countries without even invading)

Aircraft (allowed aerial bombing, and forced the construction of fighters to take down enemy bombers and fighters)

Howitzer (made artillery the decisive factor that won or lost battles. caused the destruction of massive parts of cities due to relentless artillery fire)

Submarines (allowed second-rate naval powers to torment the supply lines and trade of other nations with underwater raids, started wars due to intervention)

WW1 tanks (allowed troops to cross trenches in an armored vehicle and support infantry)

Multi-engine aircraft (allowed troop transport faster than ever before, allowed larger long-range bombers to launch actually effective bombing raids, caused the destruction of entire cities due to relentless bombing)

Radar (allowed long range detection of enemy aircraft and ships from far beyond visible radius)

WW2 tanks (revolutionized mobility, allowed encirclements that led to the capture of millions of troops, unprecedented days of death)

Aircraft carrier (made battleships obsolete, gave aircraft a much larger range by having a mobile base)

Mechanical Computer (made artillery and flak anti-aircraft guns deadly. Forced long-range bombers to engage in evasive maneuvers constantly)

Atomic bomb (most powerful explosive weapon yet made, capable to annihilate large parts of cities in one blow, made an entire empire surrender)

Guided Missile (allowed much more long range, in some cases intercontinental, "artillery")

Hydrogen bomb (ended conventional war between modern powers. assured mutually assured destruction if such a war ever did occur)

Integrated Circuit (allowed for hyper complex fighters and fighter-bombers with computer-controlled control surfaces that would easily destroy any previous kind of aircraft)

Networking (allowed a nation to produce a unified picture of airspace or logistical resources and transfer information and control systems without being there. Made cyberwafare a threat)

Cyberwarfare (effectively long range resource denial at wide scales, a drawback of having national/international networks).

Unmanned craft (allowed space travel and unmanned aerial bombing drones, and hypothetically, orbital bombardment)
 
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I'd dispute that. English and Turkish foot archers, and Scots, Flemish and Swiss pikemen, had been ruining thoughtlessly used cavalry's day since the 13-14th century, and cavalry could still be very effective even in head on charges up into the 20th century. Cavalry did slowly become more and more niche, but it wasn't anything so sudden that soldiers, as opposed to historians looking at things in retrospect, would notice.

Those examples are certainly true, but I'd say they are niche examples rather than the general rule. The introduction of infantry guns democratised the missile weapon from something that took years to learn and great strength and practice to maintain to something that a peasant could learn in a few weeks. Once this occurred the cavalry ceased to be the decisive arm that it once was, although still important for many roles for centuries.
 
What's the reason for limiting the time horizon to one mortal's lifetime? It took a long time to domesticate the horse, breed them big enough to ride. The fact remains armies did encounter fully developed cavalry, and fully mature gunpowder weapons and tactics for the first time. Even in Europe contemporary observers did marvel at how gunpowder changed everything by demolishing castles and slaying armored knights with relative ease.

I take your point, but when people first fought an enemy using horses for warfare, it was generally the first time they'd faced enemies supplied by any large draft animal. If used in combat, they were generally not replacing another mount or chariot-drawn species.

When guns entered the scene, they coexisted for centuries with weapons that served similar roles, predated them, and had further potential to improve.

Gunpowder perhaps more than any other should be on this list. The history of war could be broken into before and after the gunpowder revolution, as indeed before and after horses and aircraft came of age.

I don't disagree with that. But I think quite a number of things are comparable once we start allowing for gunpowder.
 
I think a lot of the proposed turning points here are too technological; for me, the wars of Napoleon and the French Revolution, which saw states mobilize military, economic, and moral resources beyond anything seen since the Roman Republic, stands out as the most important turning point a person could witness in their lifetime. Like, if an actual person is going to say, "War has changed," it would most likely be after the quarter century cataclysm that kicked off in 1792, because influential people essentially did conclude that war had changed, or at least been perfected.

War had been transformed from a bloody sport of princes to a vicious struggle for existence between nations, where the loser would be prostrated before the victor, and would thus fight to the bitter end. Battles went from stalemates to the ultimate agonistic test of armies and commanders. Rather than social peers distinguished by wealth or seniority, who ran their units as businesses to turn a profit, or as displays of conspicuous consumption, officers were the professional agents of the state, selected for their instrumental utility rather than social standing, and duty surpassed honor as the defining attribute. The limits to the demands an officer would make of his men were erased. Intermediate objectives ceased to have value except insofar as they contributed to the destruction of the enemy's force; the position of opposed forces in relation to each other had become more important than their position relative to terrain. It had become possible again to achieve your enemy's complete overthrow.

Obviously, the actual events are more complicated, but people at the time perceived a sharp demarcation between, say, Frederick's limited political and military objectives (take this slice of territory while the Austrians are fighting someone else, hold it by exhausting their will to continue the fight) and Napoleon's pursuit of annihilation to prostrate his enemies before him. I personally find the period all the most fascinating for much war was transformed with essentially no technological breakthroughs. Wars are fought among humanity, and changes to the human element are always the most impactful.
 
@dandan_noodles , good point. A big change of the Napoleonic wars was that French soldiers could be trusted to go off and forage and come back to their units, whereas FtG was wary of even marching through a forest so great was his fear of desertion. This gave the French great freedom that their enemies did not have, and afterwards Europeans reformed their armies to be able to do the same.
 

Saphroneth

Banned
The two biggest changes in the mechanics of how wars were fought aside from the one mentioned by dandan-noodles, to my mind, are the change from "an army in the field" to the continuous front (WW1, WW2, Korea) and then the change from the continuous front to what could be called "distributed warfare" (where armies become collections of strike teams, often flown to vital points, and major engagements are the exception rather than the rule) because they reflect fundamental changes in the experience of war.
 
There seem to be two ways this question can be answered, both of which have been raised by previous posters: technological and conceptual.
Technological
Prince Someone sees his army being taken apart by <insert new type of weapon here> and says, "War has changed!"
Some examples: ancient European armies first meeting elephants; 1WW machine guns.
Conceptual
General Somebody realises his opposite number is using his troops in a completely different way, despite having similar weapons/technological level, and says, "War has changed!"
Some examples: Macedonian phalanxes vs Roman legions; European knights/infantry vs Mongols; 2WW Blitzkrieg.
 
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