7 Weapons that changed warfare

[Molyneux]

Did they mention the atlatl? The first real example of an artificial mechanism increasing the effectiveness of a human weapon - yes, you could throw rocks and spears, but the atlatl was the first actual range-increasing innovation.

A weakling with an atlatl can outthrow a strong man without one.

[The Yosemite Bear]

nope but we have. though my revised list

1. Spear for the same reason's that darth wong stated (10,000+ years from the first sharpened stick to the last bayonette charge)

2. Industrial Revolution: brining us accuracy in fire arms, and making more complex weapons of war possible.

3. steam & desiel: changed naval and land warfar forever with the aid of the metal ship, and later the "Land ship" (tank)

4. Airpower: seizing the higher ground just became that much higher

5. cordite: while gunpowder did show promise, it was innaccurate and dangerous to the user. long live clean burning, smokeless powder that doesn't foul in bad weather.

6. The horse: mobility, keen observation platform, and once mated with the stirrup shock power.

7. math and basic physics. kicking the rabble into place from the first atalatyl , to the atomic age. give me a lever, and show me where to stand and I can move the world.

[CmdrWilkens]

no because they were insanely innaccurate. not until industrialization did guns become something very dangerous. In short it was the Mass of people firing guns, pell mell that had an impact, you had to actually close to point blank range to hope and hit something, wilst the bow was capable of giving accurate fire.

The bow accurate? Certainly an individually highly trained bowman could be accurate if given a straight line of sight but battles almost by definition exclude such access. Firing in a long arc gives range but bowman were still required to volley en mass in order to achieve effectiveness. Moreover because archery troops were always kept behind the main line of battle (expecting mounted archers which is a whole other story) they were simply not going to have the opportunity to sight on individual targets no matter how individually skilled and capable of doing so they might be.

[brianeyci]

If longbowmen didn't require accuracy, why did it take a lifetime to learn how to draw and fire it?

To the uninitiated shooting a rain of arrows from the sky, all it seems like you need is a strong fast man pulling the string back and letting loose. Is it more because nutritional standards were total shit in the middle ages, so fighting men had to be bred from youth to be healthy while peasants were sickly and had all the manner of malnutrition?

[LaCroix]

Well there are some misconceptions presented.

First no sling could outreach a bow. No way. even a little childs bow can achieve ranges of over 100 meters. I never shot any bow that didnt at least reached 150 meters. And a warbow usually reached 200 -300 meters.

The atlatl reached nearly as far (100-120 meters), that was a competition for the bow, but it was not used as widespread, as it were less easy to learn as a bow.

Up to the days of the armada, bows were more dangerous as guns and rifles.

They had more range, 6 to 10 times the fire rate (depending on the person and their current tiredness) and a lot more precision than any boomstick of that time. Rifling changed that a little, the development of fast loading mechanisms made the gun superior.

And, it doesn't take years to learn to fire an arrow in volleys, and it doesn't to aim at a humanoid target at a few tens of meters. That can be learned fast. It only takes time if you start from scratch, building strength and avoiding later injuries. Take some strong peasants (there are a lot of them) and give them some basic training, and use them to fill up the numbers in wartime. no big deal.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Since the conversation has beyond just weapons, I'd add :

Night vision gear : An enormous edge over anyone who lacks it.

Radar : You can now see and track targets you couldn't see before.

Modern medicine/sanitation : Not having your army disabled or killed by disease, and not losing nearly so many to even minor wounds is a huge advantage.

As far as slings go, sling staffs had a longer range than normal slings; and the trebuchet is basically an oversized sling staff that uses a stone weight instead of muscle power, so you could say the sling did evolve.

[Adrian Laguna]

Well there are some misconceptions presented.

First no sling could outreach a bow. No way. even a little childs bow can achieve ranges of over 100 meters. I never shot any bow that didnt at least reached 150 meters. And a warbow usually reached 200 -300 meters.

You've never shot a bow that didn't reach at least 150 metres because you're using modern bows. I'm talking about ancient times and classical times. Until compound and recurved bows became common, slings did out range bows. Typically bows reached to 100 meters, while slings could make it to 200. By the middle ages this had changed, which is why slings were no longer used.

If you read Anabasis by Xenophon, Persian slingers are consistently described as having the same range as Persian archers. However, it should be noted that the Persians used heavy sling-stones. Rhodian slingers have been said to have had twice the range of Persian slingers.

The atlatl reached nearly as far (100-120 meters), that was a competition for the bow, but it was not used as widespread, as it were less easy to learn as a bow.

The atlatls also had two other problems. It was harder to aim at range than bows and slings, as well as near impossible to use in large volleys due to the space needed by each shooter.

[LaCroix]

Sorry to say that, but I use the bows I build myself, and these are plain "carved out of a tree" wooden bows. No glue, no reflex, no recurves, no centershot, no anatomic grip. Just a "bent stick" carved to shape.

My favourite one has ~50 pounds draw weight ( usually considered a weak man's bow or just for hunting and recreation). It reaches about 170 meters top. A normal warbow (80-120 or more pounds "plain wooden bows") reaches 200 meters easyly, and up to over 300 meters. (Same as the reported ranges from old texts).

Asian recurvebows are usually a lot more efficient, and ranges were usually much higher than plain wooden bows could reach.

Some research confirmed your numbers, so I accept the range numbers for slings. Though even harder to aim as with a bow, the range is higher.

[The Dark]

no because they were insanely innaccurate. not until industrialization did guns become something very dangerous. In short it was the Mass of people firing guns, pell mell that had an impact, you had to actually close to point blank range to hope and hit something, wilst the bow was capable of giving accurate fire.

The bow accurate? Certainly an individually highly trained bowman could be accurate if given a straight line of sight but battles almost by definition exclude such access. Firing in a long arc gives range but bowman were still required to volley en mass in order to achieve effectiveness. Moreover because archery troops were always kept behind the main line of battle (expecting mounted archers which is a whole other story) they were simply not going to have the opportunity to sight on individual targets no matter how individually skilled and capable of doing so they might be.

The smoothbore musket was no better - the British army did tests of smoothbore muskets in 1846. The results were as follows:

Maximum range - 650 yards (from barrel to bullet hitting the ground)
Target shooting:
Target size: 11'6" tall by 6' wide (approx. 3.5 meters tall by 1.8 meters wide)
250 yards: 0% hit
150 yards: 50% hit
Conclusion: "as a general rule, musketry fire should not be made at a distance exceeding 150 yards and certainly not exceeding 200 yards, as at and beyond that range it would be a mere waste of ammunition to do so."
Rate of fire: 2 rounds per minute for a flintlock, 3 rounds per 2 minutes for a matchlock

Ranges for Mary Rose longbows:
Maximum range - 320-350 yards
Rate of fire: 12 rounds per minute

Personally, I'd rather have the longbow - both require calculation of angle to strike the target, but the musket is inherently inaccurate due to the undersize projectile bouncing chaotically down the barrel, and I'd rather have the far higher rate of fire (8 times higher than the matchlock, 6 times higher than the flintlock).

[Adrian Laguna]

There is one major disadvantage that everyone is forgetting about the longbow. I remember in Plymouth they have a very good copy of the Pilgrim's settlement. They have re-enactors who, acting entirely in character, tell you about life in the settlement. I asked a young man who was a member of the local militia about the issue of musket vs. bow. He said that I was right, a bow could shoot several times faster than a musket, and it even had a bit of an advantage in range.

There's two big differences that swing the equation in favour of the musket. The first is training, bowmen need to be professionals, whereas you can easily raise effective musket militia. That, however, has been discussed in this thread. The other important one is that the bow requires muscle power. A practiced musketeer can shoot all day long without much appreciable decrease in performance. Meanwhile, a bowman will quickly grow tired as the battle wears on. Eventually, both rate of fire and accuracy drop.

That is the big thing everyone has been missing in the discussion of gunpowder vs. bows, staying power. Musketeers have more of it, especially when they are defending something and have access to an armoury.