Artillery

The first missile weapon may well have been a thrown stone. Other early missile weapons were spears, some hurled by means of a throwing stick. The invention of the sling and bow showed that mechanical power could be used to propel missiles either for hunting or war. Artillery consists of military weapons too large to be operated by a single individual, as opposed to small arms, which are carried and fired by the individual soldier. In US and European armies, the distinction between small arms and artillery is at about .60 caliber (about 15 millimeters). However, contemporary artillery includes many more weapons than traditional firearms. A variety of rockets and missiles have taken their place beside cannons, guns, howitzers, and mortars. All of these are found in modern armies. Moreover, artillery is increasingly controlled—both aimed and fired—by means of digital computers. By the second half of the twentieth century, artillery had become the most lethal battlefield weapon.

Earliest Artillery

The earliest forms of artillery fired antipersonnel quarrels or bolts, which were short, thick arrows with a broad head. The projectile was driven either by springs as in the crossbow, or arbalest, or by the torsion forces released by twisted rope as in the ballista. The bolt fired from a hand-operated crossbow had a range of up to three hundred yards.

Catapults were used to bombard fortifications with heavy stones. They were most commonly powered by springs or torsion, but sometimes with counterweights, as in the trebuchet. The largest catapults could accurately propel a 60-pound missile more than five hundred yards. Catapults could also be used to fire showers of darts against human targets. These first mechanical weapons were used from ancient times, in both land and sea warfare, until people learned that the chemical energy of gunpowder could replace mechanical energy.

The first guns were used in the fourteenth century; simple cast bronze cannons were developed that fired stone balls and darts. From then until the nineteenth century, there was little important technical development. The cannons remained a smooth bore muzzle-loading weapon that fired round balls driven by coarsely granulated black powder. A gunner of the fourteenth century would have been familiar with the guns and principles of gunnery used at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

The Effects of Rifling

The Crimean War (1853–1856) led to far-reaching changes. Rifled small arms were coming into wider use. Because the accurate range of the rifle was greater than that of smoothbore artillery, longer-range artillery had to be developed in order to protect the gunners. Moreover, forts and warships armored with steel or iron plates were being built. To penetrate this new armor, greater muzzle velocity was needed. With black powder, the only way to achieve additional power was to make longer gun barrels. Muzzle-loading guns became completely impractical aboard ship because the piece had to be run far inboard to make room to swab and load the barrel. Even on land, muzzle-loading guns became too awkward to handle.

The solution to these problems was to adopt breech-loading guns made from steel tubes shrunk around one another for strength. Hydraulic or spring-loaded systems were devised to handle the greater recoil forces of more powerful guns. In 1897, the French army adopted a 75-millimeter (0.3-inch) light field gun that revolutionized artillery. It had a recoil brake, a shield to protect the gunners, and a quick-opening breech mechanism. It fired a one-piece round of ammunition that could be loaded rapidly.

World War I

When World War I (1914–1918) broke out in 1914, the armies of the industrialized nations were all armed with breech-loading rifled guns. No one had anticipated the development of trench warfare in which the opposing armies faced one another across no-man’s-land in trenches dug from Switzerland to the sea. Enormous quantities of artillery were deployed; the preliminary bombardment before some of the great attacks involved thousands of guns and millions of shells. Many new guns and munitions were devised to meet the needs of this new kind of warfare. Railway guns, which are heavy howitzers mounted on flat cars for mobility, antiaircraft guns, and antitank guns were among the new types. A great variety of shells were used. In addition to ordinary high-explosive, there was shrapnel that burst overhead, throwing hundreds of secondary projectiles or fragments on those below. Armor-piercing shells were devised for use against steel armored vessels and heavy concrete fortifications. Gas shells were used to saturate enemy trenches with poison gas. High explosive shells with delayed fusing were used to frighten defenders into staying undercover even after the end of the bombardment.

World War II

More new ideas emerged during World War II (1939–1945). Self-propelled guns were developed so that artillery could go alongside tanks and get closer to their targets. Because armored vehicles had become heavier, newer and more powerful antitank guns were needed. The German 88-millimeter (0.33-inch) field gun, which had both antitank and antiaircraft capabilities, was probably the outstanding artillery piece of the war. Smaller quick-firing guns had to be devised to deal with low-flying aircraft. Although gas was not used in World War II, the Allies did use white phosphorus shells whose purpose was to burn enemy soldiers who came into contact with the material. The invention of radar proximity fuses for antiaircraft shells was one of the outstanding technical developments of the war. Recoilless rifles were devised for use where weight reduction was paramount, for example, for parachute troops.

World War II also saw the first large-scale introduction of guided missiles. Although rockets had been used in war for a long time, they tended to be unreliable and inaccurate. During the war, both the United States and the Soviet Union used rocket launchers that could fire multiple cheaply made rockets at the enemy. Because of their inaccuracy, they were used for area bombardment rather than point targets. Germany’s development and use of the V-1 cruise missile and the V-2 rocket showed that guided missiles could be effective weapons with great range. The V-2 could carry a warhead of a ton of high explosive for distances far greater than the heaviest gun. The use of the first atomic bombs in 1945 and the subsequent perfection of the hydrogen bomb spurred guided missile research in a number of countries. The combination of miniaturized digital electronics and guided missile technology made possible the vast array of missile weapons and types that were developed in the years after World War II.

Modern Artillery Types

The simplest classification of modern artillery is by the type of propulsion used, rocket or traditional. Traditional propulsion involves a barrel or tube of some kind and a projectile that is fired by gunpowder.

A gun is a cannon that fires on a flat trajectory. Although the Paris Gun, used by Germany to bombard Paris during World War I, had a range of seventy-five miles, modern field guns are normally used at a range of fifteen miles or less. Most Western armies implemented 105-millimeter (0.4-inch) and 155-millimeter (0.6-inch) medium support guns. The 16-inch naval rifles used in World War II battleships had a range of more than twenty miles. Howitzers and mortars fire at a high trajectory angle in order to deliver shells from above and at greater range. A howitzer usually has a shorter barrel than a gun. Mortars consist of a tube and baseplate. The shell is dropped into the tube and is fired by a primer in its base. Small mortars are used as infantry weapons and are carried into battle by one or two soldiers, who throw a high-explosive shell of five to eleven pounds on a high-arching trajectory at targets up to three miles away..

Modern air defense artillery is radar-aimed and has an immense rate of fire. The principle of the Gatling gun—multiple rotating barrels—has been used for short-range air defense, even against missiles. Such guns fire shells that range from 20 to 60 millimeters in diameter; the 20-millimeter US Vulcan cannon is an example.

Rocket-propelled weapons underwent significant changes in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The largest are intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which are designed to deliver multiple nuclear warheads and sometimes decoys at ranges of up to eight thousand miles. Intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) have the same capability, but have shorter range and smaller payloads. They can carry either nuclear or high-explosive warheads. Cruise missiles are precision-guided missiles that fly at low altitudes. They may be powered either by jet or rocket engines. Sometimes land-based, they can also be launched from aircraft, ships, and submarines. Although nuclear-capable, they are most often used to strike at specific buildings, fortifications, or ships. They carry a payload of 1,000 to 1,300 pounds of high explosive. The French Exocet and US Tomahawk are examples of the type. Smaller rockets, either wire-guided by the gunner or electronically steered, are used extensively against tanks and other armored vehicles.

Many rockets have also been developed for defense against missiles and aircraft. These combine radar or heat-seeking capability with digital electronics to provide extraordinarily accurate point defense systems. The Patriot missile, used by the United States during the Gulf War of 1991, destroyed a number of Iraqi IRBMs before they reached their targets. The US Stinger missile is a shoulder-fired missile that locks on to the heat exhaust of an airplane and tracks it. Although locked to the exhaust system, it deviates at the last moment and strikes the target rather than the exhaust gases.

Over the course of the twenty-first century, the continued development of artillery technology is expected to change military tactics radically. The Gulf War of 1991, which was fought with cruise missiles, antimissile missiles, radar-guided counterbattery fire, “smart” bombs, and computer aimed antitank weapons, marked but the beginning of a new age in warfare.

At the same time, the effect of the repeated firing of artillery on the human body, specifically the exposure to repeated blasts and shockwaves that artillery crews are subjected to, began to be further scrutinized by militaries and medical professionals. For instance, the New York Times reported in 2024 that the US military began examining evidence that potentially linked blast pressure to brain injuries in artillery crews, such as the repeated exposure that mortar operators experience during a career that can see them fire thousands of rounds of ammunition. Previously, a 2016 study published in the medical journal the Lancet found a link between military members’ repeated blast exposure and microscopic tears in the brain.

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