Innovations of War: The Evolution of Tactical Military Weapons (2015)
This documentary series takes a look at the constantly evolving ways in which wars are fought, focusing on the technological advances in warfare weaponry beginning with the Industrial Revolution and through the modern-day.
Seasons & Episode
No single piece of hardware dominates modern land warfare like the tank. Heavily armored, possessing devastating fire power, and highly mobile over broken terrain, it enables commanders to exploit even the smallest enemy weakness.
Nothing could have been more fortuitous than the timing of the Civil War's coming. At least so far as the makers of weapons were concerned. For the men who had to use and suffer by those arms, of course, it was a different story. Because only now was the nation technologically ready for a civil war.
Many believe that it was the ominous sound of cannon fire that heralded the true end of the Middle Ages. The cannon certainly had a major impact in sieges and battles. Initially, they were prized for their ability to destroy stone walls, and thereby end sieges.
On the night of September 6th, 1776, a small group of men on the shore of New York Harbor silently lowered a most peculiar-looking craft named the American Turtle into the water. It carried an underwater bomb. The Turtle was not the first submarine craft, but it was the first used in war. A new age in warfare was about to be ushered in.
The first rockets were invented by the Chinese more than a thousand years ago. A byproduct of their invention of gunpowder, rockets were used to add extra flare to fireworks displays. It was inevitable that these far-reaching projectiles would eventually take on militaristic applications.
The beginning of the 20th century saw the pioneers of vertical flight resolving many of the problems that kept their crafts from getting off the ground.