Armour or armor is a covering used to protect an object, individual, or vehicle from physical injury or damage, especially direct contact weapons or projectiles during combat, or from a potentially dangerous environment or activity. Personal armour is used to protect soldiers and war animals. Vehicle armour is used on warships, armoured fighting vehicles, and some combat aircraft, mostly ground attack aircraft.
The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, commonly known as the Non-Proliferation Treaty or NPT, is an international treaty whose objective is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons technology, to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and to further the goal of achieving nuclear disarmament and general and complete disarmament. Between 1965 and 1968, the treaty was negotiated by the Eighteen Nation Committee on Disarmament, a United Nations-sponsored organization based in Geneva, Switzerland.
A polearm or pole weapon is a close combat weapon in which the main fighting part of the weapon is fitted to the end of a long shaft, typically of wood, extending the user's effective range and striking power. Polearms are predominantly melee weapons, with a subclass of spear-like designs fit for thrusting and/or throwing. Because many polearms were adapted from agricultural implements or other fairly abundant tools, and contained relatively little metal, they were cheap to make and readily available. When belligerents in warfare had a poorer class who could not pay for dedicated military weapons, they would often appropriate tools as cheap weapons. The cost of training was comparatively low, since these conscripted farmers had spent most of their lives using these "weapons" in the fields. This made polearms the favoured weapon of peasant levies and peasant rebellions the world over.
A Roman siege tower or breaching tower is a specialized siege engine, constructed to protect assailants and ladders while approaching the defensive walls of a fortification. The tower was often rectangular with four wheels with its height roughly equal to that of the wall or sometimes higher to allow archers or crossbowmen to stand on top of the tower and shoot arrows or quarrels into the fortification. Because the towers were wooden and thus flammable, they had to have some non-flammable covering of iron or fresh animal skins.
Nuclear warfare, also known as atomic warfare, is a military conflict or prepared political strategy that deploys nuclear weaponry. Nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction; in contrast to conventional warfare, nuclear warfare can produce destruction in a much shorter time and can have a long-lasting radiological result. A major nuclear exchange would likely have long-term effects, primarily from the fallout released, and could also lead to secondary effects, such as "nuclear winter", nuclear famine, and societal collapse. A global thermonuclear war with Cold War-era stockpiles, or even with the current smaller stockpiles, may lead to various scenarios including human extinction.
A halberd is a two-handed polearm that came to prominent use from the 13th to 16th centuries. The halberd consists of an axe blade topped with a spike mounted on a long shaft. It can have a hook or thorn on the back side of the axe blade for grappling mounted combatants and protecting allied soldiers, typically musketeers. The halberd was usually 1.5 to 1.8 metres long.
An arquebus is a form of long gun that appeared in Europe and the Ottoman Empire during the 15th century. An infantryman armed with an arquebus is called an arquebusier.
The M1 carbine is a lightweight semi-automatic carbine chambered in the .30 carbine (7.62×33mm) cartridge that was issued to the U.S. military during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War. The M1 carbine was produced in several variants and was widely used by paramilitary and police forces around the world after World War II.
A musket is a muzzle-loaded long gun that appeared as a smoothbore weapon in the early 16th century, at first as a heavier variant of the arquebus, capable of penetrating plate armour. By the mid-16th century, this type of musket gradually disappeared as the use of heavy armour declined, but musket continued as the generic term for smoothbore long guns until the mid-19th century. In turn, this style of musket was retired in the 19th century when rifled muskets using the Minié ball became common. The development of breech-loading firearms using self-contained cartridges and the first reliable repeating rifles produced by Winchester Repeating Arms Company in 1860 also led to their demise. By the time that repeating rifles became common, they were known as simply "rifles", ending the era of the musket.
Incendiary weapons, incendiary devices, incendiary munitions, or incendiary bombs are weapons designed to start fires. They may destroy structures or sensitive equipment using fire, and sometimes operate as anti-personnel weaponry. Incendiaries utilize materials such as napalm, thermite, magnesium powder, chlorine trifluoride, or white phosphorus. Though colloquially often called "bombs", they are not explosives but in fact operate to slow the process of chemical reactions and use ignition rather than detonation to start or maintain the reaction. Napalm, for example, is petroleum especially thickened with certain chemicals into a gel to slow, but not stop, combustion, releasing energy over a longer time than an explosive device. In the case of napalm, the gel adheres to surfaces and resists suppression.
The Hussite Wars, also called the Bohemian Wars or the Hussite Revolution, were a series of civil wars fought between the Hussites and the combined Catholic forces of Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund, the Papacy, and European monarchs loyal to the Catholic Church, as well as various Hussite factions. At a late stage of the conflict, the Utraquists changed sides in 1432 to fight alongside Roman Catholics and opposed the Taborites and other Hussite factions. These wars lasted from 1419 to approximately 1434.
A flail is a weapon consisting of a striking head attached to a handle by a flexible rope, strap, or chain. The chief tactical virtue of the flail is its capacity to strike around a defender's shield or parry. Its chief liability is a lack of precision and the difficulty of using it in close combat, or closely-ranked formations.
An area denial weapon is a defensive device used to prevent an adversary from occupying or traversing an area of land, sea or air. The specific method may not be totally effective in preventing passage, but is sufficient to severely restrict, slow down, or endanger the opponent. Some area denial weapons pose risks to civilians entering the area even long after combat has ended, and consequently are often controversial. An area denial weapon can be part of an anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy.
A club is a short staff or stick, usually made of wood, wielded as a weapon or tool since prehistory. There are several examples of blunt-force trauma caused by clubs in the past, including at the site of Nataruk in Turkana, Kenya, described as the scene of a prehistoric conflict between bands of hunter-gatherers 10,000 years ago.
The repeating crossbow, also known as the repeater crossbow, and the Zhuge crossbow due to its association with the Three Kingdoms-era strategist Zhuge Liang (181–234 AD), is a crossbow invented during the Warring States period in China that combined the bow spanning, bolt placing, and shooting actions into one motion.
A war wagon is any of several historical types of early fighting vehicle involving an armed or armored animal-drawn cart or wagon.
The hwacha or hwach'a was a multiple rocket launcher and an organ gun of similar design which were developed in fifteenth century Korea. The former variant fired one or two hundred rocket-powered arrows, while the latter fired several dozen iron-headed arrows or bolts out of gun barrels. The term was used to refer to other war wagons or other cart-based artillery in later periods, such as that developed by Byeon Yijung in the 1590s.
The 240 mm howitzer M1, popularly nicknamed the "Black Dragon", was a towed howitzer used by the United States Army. The 240 mm M1 was designed to replace the World War I era 240 mm howitzer M1918, which was based on a 1911 French design and was outdated by World War II.
The gunpowder empires, or Islamic gunpowder empires, is a collective term coined by Marshall G. S. Hodgson and William H. McNeill at the University of Chicago, referring to three early modern Muslim empires: the Ottoman Empire, Safavid Empire and the Mughal Empire, in the period they flourished from mid-16th to the early 18th century. These three empires were among the most stable empires of the early modern period, leading to commercial expansion, and patronage of culture, while their political and legal institutions were consolidated with an increasing degree of centralization. They stretched from Central Europe and North Africa in the west to Bengal and Arakan in the east. Hodgson's colleague William H. McNeill expanded on the history of gunpowder use across multiple civilizations including East Asian, South Asian and European powers in his "The Age of Gunpowder Empires". Vast amounts of territory were conquered by the gunpowder empires with the use and development of the newly invented firearms, especially cannon and small arms, in the course of imperial expansion. Like in Europe, the introduction of gunpowder weapons prompted changes such as the rise of centralized monarchical states.
