Land Warfare: Strategies and Tactics in Modern Military Science

By Fouad Sabry

What is Land Warfare

Land warfare or ground warfare is the process of military operations eventuating in combat that takes place predominantly on the battlespace land surface of the planet.

How you will benefit

(I) Insights, and validations about the following topics:

Chapter 1: Land warfare

Chapter 2: Armoured fighting vehicle

Chapter 3: Infantry

Chapter 4: Mechanized infantry

Chapter 5: Self-propelled artillery

Chapter 6: United States Armed Forces

Chapter 7: Military tactics

Chapter 8: Combined arms

Chapter 9: Anti-tank warfare

Chapter 10: Urban warfare

(II) Answering the public top questions about land warfare.

Who this book is for

Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information for any kind of Land Warfare.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Billion Knowledgeable
• Release date: May 29, 2024

Book preview

Chapter 1: Land warfare

Land warfare or ground warfare refers to the military operations that culminate in combat mostly on the battlespace land surface of the planet.

Land warfare is characterized by the use of huge numbers of combat people employing a diversified range of fighting abilities, procedures, and a vast array of weapon systems and equipment across a variety of terrains and climates. By virtue of being performed in defense of urban and rural population regions, land warfare dominates the study of war and is the focal point of the majority of national defense policy planning and finance considerations.

Land warfare in history has undergone several distinct transitions in conduct, from the use of large concentrations of largely untrained and irregularly armed populations in frontal assaults to the current employment of combined arms concepts with highly trained regular troops employing a wide variety of organisational, weapon, and information systems, and employing a variety of strategic, operational, and tactical doctrines.

In the past, ground warfare was undertaken by the combat arms of the armed forces; but, since World War II, infantry, armor, and artillery have been the predominant types of combat units. Since the Age of Sail, these arms have used amphibious warfare concepts and methods to project power from the seas and oceans. Since the widespread introduction of military transport aircraft and helicopters, they have added airborne forces and vertical envelopment to the variety of doctrines used to prosecute land warfare.

Land forces consist of soldiers, weapon platforms, vehicles, and support elements that operate on land to carry out specified missions and responsibilities.

Infantry are soldiers who primarily fight on foot with small arms in organized military groups, although they may be delivered to the battlefield via ships, trucks, skis, or cargo planes.

Combat vehicles enable the mobilization of heavy weapons to engage adversary forces, including other combat vehicles. Typically, combat vehicles are designed to traverse difficult terrain. Typically, they are shielded against other common hazards by armor and other countermeasures.

Battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and self-propelled artillery are examples of combat vehicles.

Historiographically, artillery (from French artillerie) refers to any war machine used to fire projectiles. The word also refers to ground-based personnel whose major responsibility is to operate such weapons. The term comes from the Old French verb attilier, which means to equip..

This phrase refers to coastal artillery, which has historically defended coastal areas from seaborne attack and controlled the passage of ships by denying access by the threat of coastal fire. Also included are land-based field artillery systems. With the advent of powered flight at the beginning of the 20th century, artillery also comprised anti-aircraft positions located on the ground.

Combined arms is a method of warfare that tries to combine diverse arms of a military to create mutually complimentary effects, including self-propelled artillery, mechanized infantry, aviation, etc.

Arctic warfare

Desert warfare

Jungle warfare

Mountain warfare

Urban warfare

{End Chapter 1}

Chapter 2: Armoured fighting vehicle

An armed combat vehicle protected by armor is known as an armored fighting vehicle (AFV) in both British and American English. AFVs typically combine operational mobility with offensive and defensive capabilities. AFVs can move on wheels or on tracks. Tanks, armored automobiles, assault rifles, self-propelled weapons, infantry fighting vehicles (IFV), and armored personnel carriers are a few examples of AFVs (APC).

According to its qualities and intended use on the battlefield, armored fighting vehicles are categorized. The categories are not universal; the criteria are subject to change over time and various countries may classify the same vehicle in different ways. For instance, infantry fighting vehicles with substantially greater armament mainly replaced relatively lightly armed armored personnel carriers in a comparable duty.

Designs that are successful are frequently modified for a wide range of uses. For instance, the MOWAG Piranha, which was initially intended to be an APC, has been modified to serve as a mortar carriage, infantry combat vehicle, and assault gun, among other functions.

The armoured car, tank, self-propelled cannon, and troop carrier were among the first armored fighting vehicles to be used in World War I. Armed forces had a significant number of AFVs by World War II, along with other types of vehicles for transporting soldiers, allowing for extremely mobile maneuver warfare.

From Hannibal's war elephants to Leonardo's inventions, military strategists have always sought to increase the mobility and survivability of their soldiers. The idea of a highly mobile and shielded fighting unit is not new.

Prior to the development of sufficiently powerful internal combustion engines around the turn of the 20th century, armored war vehicles were not feasible.

Providing troops with mobile defense and weaponry is an old idea that has been realized in modern armored fighting vehicles. For millennia, armies have engaged in combat with war machines and cavalries equipped with crude armor. Engineering concepts and the use of these creatures attempted to strike a balance between the paradoxically contradictory needs for mobility, firepower, and protection.

In order to shield their crews from enemy attack, siege engines like battering rams and siege towers were frequently armored. Greek armies utilized such constructions in the Siege of Rhodes. Polyidus of Thessaly created the helepolis, a very huge mobile siege tower, in 340 BC (305 BC).

Since ancient times, the concept of a protected fighting vehicle has existed. Leonardo da Vinci's 15th-century sketch of a mobile, protected gun-platform is frequently mentioned; the sketches depict a conical, wooden structure with cannon apertures around the outside. A system of hand cranks and cage (or lantern) gears would be used by the crew to turn the machine's four wheels. Leonardo asserted, I'll construct armored carts that can withstand attacks from the enemy. There won't be anything it can't get through. The human crew would have been able to transport it just a short distance, according to modern copies.

Around 1420, during the Hussite Wars, Hussite forces in Bohemia created war wagons, medieval horse-drawn wagons that also served as wagon forts.

Firearms slits were added to the protecting sides of these massive carriages; They either had a cannon or a group of handgunners and crossbowmen who provided considerable firepower, supported by pike- and flail-wielding infantry and light cavalry.

Heavy arquebuses mounted on wagons were called arquebus à croc.

About 3.5 ounces of ball was carried by these (100 g).

Most modern militaries possessed vehicles that could transport soldiers, artillery, and anti-aircraft weapons before the conclusion of World War II. The majority of modern AFVs resemble their World War II forebears in appearance, but they have substantially improved armour, weaponry, engines, electronics, and suspension. Transporting AFVs by air is made conceivable and practical by the growth in transport aircraft capacity. Some or all of the classic heavy vehicles used by many armies are being replaced by lighter airmobile variants, frequently having wheels in place of tracks.

The first contemporary AFVs were armed cars, which predate the motor vehicle in many ways. The Motor Scout was created by British inventor F. R. Simms in 1898. It was the first vehicle ever made with an armed petrol engine. It was made up of a quadricycle made by De Dion-Bouton with a Maxim machine gun mounted on the front bar. The driver had limited frontal protection from an iron shield, but there was no overall protective armor.

The French Charron, Girardot et Voigt 1902, which was unveiled at the Salon de l'Automobile et du Cycle in Brussels on March 8, 1902, was another early armored vehicle of the time. During World War I, armored automobiles were first utilized as scouting vehicles in great numbers on both sides.

In his short fiction The Land Ironclads, published in 1903, H. G. Wells predicted that unstoppable war machines would usher in a new era of land warfare, much as steam-powered ironclad warships had put an end to the age of sail.

Wells's literary vision came true in 1916 when the British Landship Committee used ground-breaking armored vehicles to end the Great War's pyrrhic halt. The tank was intended to be an armored vehicle that could traverse terrain while being attacked by machine guns and respond with mounted machine guns and naval artillery. These first British tanks of World War I traversed the muddy, pocked terrain and slit trenches of the Battle of the Somme thanks to caterpillar treads that had significantly lower ground pressure than wheeled vehicles.

The tank eventually became a weapon that could cover great distances at much faster speeds than assisting infantry and artillery as technology advanced. A broad variety of specialized AFVs were developed, particularly during the Second World War (1939–1945), in order to provide the forces that would fight alongside the tank.

Towards the close of World War I, the armored personnel carrier—used to deliver infantry soldiers to the front lines—was developed. It had become evident during the initial tank actions that close touch with infantry was necessary to hold terrain won by the tanks. While troops on foot were exposed to enemy fire, they also couldn't be transported in a tank due to the harsh conditions (extreme heat, foul air). Lieutenant G. J. Rackham was given the task of creating an armored vehicle capable of fighting and transporting troops or supplies in 1917. Only three Mark IX tanks had been completed at the time of the Armistice in November 1918, and only 34 in all were made by Armstrong, Whitworth & Co.

During the interwar years, various tank classes were developed. The tankette was designed as a portable, two-man variant with reconnaissance as its primary use. The Carden Loyd tankette, created in 1925 by Sir John Carden and Vivian Loyd, was the first of its kind to be widely used. The Royal Italian Army employed tankettes in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935–1936), and nearly everywhere else Italian soldiers engaged in World War II. Tankettes were used by the Imperial Japanese Army in jungle combat.

The first self-propelled artillery, the British Gun Carrier Mark I, entered service in 1917. It had a strong field-gun and was based on the first tank, the British Mark I. The Birch gun (1925), created for the British motorized combat experimental brigade, was the following significant development (the Experimental Mechanized Force). This installed a field cannon on a tank chassis that could fire the standard artillery trajectory as well as anti-aircraft rounds.

The majority of the main military nations created self-propelled artillery during World War II. These included weapons installed on tracked chassis, frequently that of a tank that was no longer in service or had been replaced, and an armored superstructure to safeguard the gun and its crew. The 25 pdr gun-howitzer was mounted improvisedly on a tank chassis in the first British version, Bishop, which significantly reduced the gun's performance. The more practical Sexton took its place. German engineers produced a large number of light armored self-propelled anti-tank weapons using French equipment they had acquired, their own outdated light tank chassis (Marder II), or ex-Czech chassis (Marder III). These led to the development of better-defended tank destroyers built on the chassis of medium tanks like the Jagdpanzer IV or the Jagdpanther.

In World War I, the self-propelled anti-aircraft weapon made its premiere. Both the British QF 3-inch 20 cwt and the German 88 mm anti-aircraft gun were mounted on trucks and deployed against British tanks with remarkable success on the Western Front. The Birch cannon could be elevated for use as anti-aircraft artillery despite being a general-purpose artillery piece mounted on an armored tracked chassis. Based on the Mk.E 6-ton light tank/Dragon Medium Mark IV tractor chassis, Vickers Armstrong created one of the first SPAAGs, with a 40 mm Vickers QF-1 Pom-Pom cannon. By the beginning of the war, the Germans had cargo halftracks with a single 20 mm or 37 mm AA cannon mounted on the Sd.Kfz. 10/4 and 6/2, respectively.

The Soviet Katyusha and other rocket launchers date back to the late 1930s. In World War II, the Panzerwerfer and Wurfrahmen 40 armed half-track armored