Military Revolution Research Articles

The Phenomenon of Psychological Warfare in the Era of the Sun King

The article examines the main aspects of the design of the psychofield (psychological landscape) of the French monarchy in the Early Modern era in the context of the formation of absolutism (as a geopolitical doctrine) in the context of the «military revolution» in Europe. The author examines the transformations of mass consciousness within the framework of the phenomenon of the «mental revolution», which determined the emergence of new forms of legitimization of social ties in the context of the formation of innovative systems of constructing loyalties that replace, absorb or conflict with alternative identities within the framework of a new state-building, in an imperial situation. The author touches upon the problem of the formation of a new «psychoparadigma», which determines the course of a number of social and political processes that determined the formation of court society as an element of the state mechanism. A direct reflection of this process was a complex of political, psychological and socio-cultural transformations, which, following N. Henschel, we interpret as the «myth of absolutism», which gave rise to a whole complex of innovations in the development of mass consciousness, which was most manifested, first of all, in the development of military affairs. A direct reflection of this phenomenon was, among other things, the active use of the practice of «psychological warfare» in the campaigns of the «Sun King», which is associated with a rethinking of the degat principle characteristic of the Middle Ages – waging a devastating war.

Digital Targeting: Artificial Intelligence, Data, and Military Intelligence

Abstract It is widely believed that we are on the brink of another military revolution. Today, states are actively seeking to harness the power of AI for military advantage. The question of AI is therefore of profound concern to security studies scholars concerned with global issues. Up to now, the literature has tended to concentrate on AI-enabled lethal autonomous weapons; scholars have been fascinated by the possible appearance of autonomous drone swarms and their implications for security, conflict, and war. This article takes an alternative view. It argues that AI has already begun to play a significant role in military operations and is likely to be more important in the future. However, the attention to lethal autonomous weapons is exaggerated. The armed forces have principally employed AI, not to automate weapons but to help process data. AI has been used to augment military intelligence. Above all, the armed forces have harnessed AI to accelerate and improve military targeting. The article explores two recent cases where the armed forces have used data and AI to target: COVID testing in Liverpool in 2020 and the US’s Security Assistance Group-Ukraine in the Ukraine War in 2022.

The Curse of Triumph: Military Revolution During the Peloponnesian War and Sparta's Failure to Adapt

The Curse of Triumph: Military Revolution During the Peloponnesian War and Sparta's Failure to Adapt

Революционные и квазиреволюционные события XXI в. на Фиджи

This article examines a period that can be broadly characterized as the era of military coups (similar to analogues of revolutions) and military revolutions in the state of Fiji, which began in the late 1980s and continued into the 21st century, receiving the name coup culture both in the media and in academic literature. The main factors of political instability in the region are the conflicts between the indigenous (Melanesian) Fijian and Indo-Fijian populations of the country, which have been caused by various reasons ranging from religious to economic. As a result of the events of the 21st century, a military dictatorship under the leadership of ethnic Fijian leaders was established in the country, and the proportion of the Indo-Fijian population was significantly reduced. In addition, there was a conflict between representatives of the state apparatus and local religious institutions, who were dissatisfied with the actions and policies of the new leadership.

Drones and their Role in the Evolution of Generations of War

This research addresses a group of important issues related to drones that made a new revolution in modern warfare. These drones represent a new method of inflicting the largest losses on the enemy’s ranks, at low costs and without loss of pilots or aircraft.
 We discussed how the countries that possess these weapons, despite their small size, were able to find new balances that could soon portend the possibility of achieving larger and deeper balances with the major powers. What these aircraft achieved, for instance, in the wars of Yemen, Azerbaijan, Ethiopia, and others, can give a clear idea about this weapon, which represented a new military revolution capable of achieving strategic goals without losses

War-Canoes and Poisoned Arrows

Abstract The paper examines the repulse of fifteenth century Portuguese slave raids in the Senegambia by the armed forces of the empires of Great Jolof and Imperial Mali, within the context of the ongoing Military Revolution debate and with an emphasis on the military organization and weaponry deployed by both sides. Despite the claims of some historians about early European advantages in naval warfare, any such superiority on the part of the European vessels was not demonstrated in these encounters, with the war-canoes and poisoned arrows of the Jolof and Malian marines proving highly effective against the caravels, cannons, and crossbows of the Portuguese sailors. The African militaries of the Senegambia region were well-organized, well-disciplined, and more than capable of defeating European marauders. If Europeans did develop notable military advantages over West Africans in the sixteenth century, they had not yet begun to do so in the fifteenth.

The Development of Military Medicine in the Era of the «Military Revolution in Europe» in France

The subject of the study is the main aspects of the formation of the military medical service of the French Kingdom of the epoch of the Great Century. The purpose of the review is to demonstrate the integration of the Institute of military Medicine into the ideological machine of the Sun King. The author pays attention to the political, economic and socio-cultural aspects of this process, which took place against the background of the formation of absolutism as a military-political concept.
 The author demonstrates the transformation of military medicine as a specific sociocultural practice into an integral part of the life of the French army of the era of the military revolution, which was primarily an element of propaganda, which was associated with the regular actualization of the thesis that the actions of doctors are an act of goodwill on the part of the crown, as well as the supply of units, clothing provisions and ammunition. This increased the morale of the troops, despite the removal
 from the camps of the baggage women, who had already received the idyllic name "Aphrodite's army" at that time. The characterized phenomenon is presented in the article as an example of the instrumentalization of the ancient (in particular, the Ro-
 man heritage), which is an integral part of the transformation of the military and political mechanisms of European political states. In many ways, an unobvious manifestation of this process is the widespread introduction of the simplest sanitary and hygienic standards into army use, such as, for example, the use of a block system for the location of the main components of the camp, which made its structure more orderly and efficient.

Evolution of Military Logistics

Background: Military logistics has been present from the moment a soldier was created, and its evolution has been influenced by the technology used. Indeed, it has been observed over time that every military revolution was intrinsically caused by a military logistics revolution, directly promoted by the technology applied to the manner of making war. Few papers have been written about military logistics in relation to the development of war itself. Its application was conceptualized in two dimensions: as an art and as a science, interdependent on decision-making. With the evolution of human beings, the way of making war also evolved and therefore a transformation was generated. This makes it necessary to deepen the application of mathematical modeling, statistics, and new technologies in military logistics, promoting the application of concepts based on technology to improve the effectiveness of armies. The aim of this paper is to review the evolution of military logistics. Methods: A systematic approach to the literature review is followed. The backgrounds of the military logistics thought, key authors, trends and a new definition of military logistics is presented, among others. Results: The findings allow us to identify a set of 21 definitions of military logistics since 1792.

Looking back to look forward: Autonomous systems, military revolutions, and the importance of cost

ABSTRACT Autonomous systems are often lauded as revolutionary. However, what makes them revolutionary is still up for debate. We identify assumptions about the revolutionary effect of autonomy and draw on historical work to examine how these characteristics have affected past conflicts. Our look at the past suggests where these systems may be most revolutionary is in cost mitigation—both political and economic. Mitigating economic cost helps create mass, firepower, and resiliency while mitigating political cost allows states to control force with escalation risks and domestic support. This balance is key for states that rely on autonomous systems to win competition strategies.

UAV Cluster Behavior Modeling Based on Spatial-Temporal Hybrid Petri Net

Currently, we are facing an increasing trend in the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in various activities, both civilian and military. The application of UAVs in the battlefield has received extensive attention amid a global new military revolution. A UAV cluster is a large and complex real-time feedback system that integrates a communication and sensor network, control system, calculation, and physical process. The heterogeneous UAVs conduct complex behaviors, which requires a comprehensive description and analysis of UAV cluster modeling. The integrated modeling of the heterogeneous UAV cluster is of great significance and value to test and verify the new combat mode. In this paper, we present a novel representation framework based on the Petri nets. We used a spatial-temporal hybrid Petri net to illustrate the discrete state and continuous process of a heterogeneous UAV cluster system, and effectively achieved the fusion of a physical and computational process and interaction event modeling in the cluster system. Finally, the formal verification of UAV cluster attack mission modeling was carried out by UPPAAL, suggesting the proposed modeling method is feasible and effective.

«Military revolution» of Western Europe and political transformation in England during the reign of Elizabeth I

«Military revolution» of Western Europe and political transformation in England during the reign of Elizabeth I

ПЕТРОВСКИЕ ПРЕОБРАЗОВАНИЯ В КОНТЕКСТЕ ТЕОРИИ ВОЕННОЙ РЕВОЛЮЦИИ

The theory of military revolution is known to describe the process of transformation of states in Early modern period with the appearance of armed with firearms regular armies. According to the Brian Downing model, this process consists of several successive steps. 1. The starting point in development is the medieval monarchy, where the power of the suzerain is limited to meetings (conditionally, “parliaments”), where aristocrats predominate, managing the resources of their land holdings. 2. The military revolution downgrades the value of chivalry and requires the creation of a large army of firearms-wielding mercenary infantrymen. 3. Funding a new army requires the reallocation of resources to the detriment of the nobility. 4. “Parliaments” resist these demands, with the conflict between the monarchs and the nobility starting. 5. The new army ensures the victory of monarchs. 6. The monarchs abolish “parliaments” or deprive them of real powers that means the victory of absolutism. 7. Further, the victorious monarchs subjugate the nobility, taking away part of their resources. 8. Reforms start, with a new financial system created. 9. New bureaucracy is created, with commoners recruited for positions. 10. The nobility tries to fit into these new structures by taking office positions. The article focuses on testing the Downing model on the material of Peter I transformations and shows that Russian historical process of the second half of the 17th - early 18th centuries actually went through the ten steps mentioned above.

Core determinants of the regional prognostic scenario. Global technological transformation and a new paradigm of military affairs

The authors believe that, in the first approximation, the core determinants are: global technological transformation and a paradigm shift in military affairs, geo-economic divergence as a result of geopolitical confrontation and radical shifts in the demographic matrix of the region. In this article, the authors focused on the first and second topics. In Latin America, which retains signs of periphery, there will be a phase lag in technological renewal, complicated by the complexity of society and the economy. To a certain extent, the LCA remains aloof from the main line of geopolitical confrontation, but at the same time it does not escape the indirect impact of the military revolution. We are talking about changes in the regional market of military equipment, as well as the evolution of the functional use of the armed forces.

Of ‘Master’ and ‘Grand Narratives’ and Their Discontents: Early Modern European Military History

This article offers a short, critical survey of the 'grand' or 'master' narratives produced since the 1950s by those discussing the history of war in early modern Europe. It examines in turn the War and Society approach, the concept of a Military Revolution, narratives linking political and social impacts, the more recent models of Fiscal Military and Contractor States, and the debates around the nature of military change. It concludes that grand narratives are always flawed, but we need them to relate or compare what would otherwise be a bewildering array of disconnected stories.

Justice of the Peace and the Formation of County Militias in England in the End of the 16<sup>th</sup> and Beginning of the 17<sup>th</sup> Century (on the Example of Norfolk County)

The article examines the activities of the justice of peace of the English county of Norfolk Nathaniel Bacon on the formation of the county militia in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Analysis of his “notes”, correspondence with representatives of the central government and other documents shows that the justice of peace was involved in many issues of the formation and armament of the county militias. He reported regularly on these matters to the Privy Coun cil. In the center of his attention was the collection of monies from the population for the acquisition of weapons, the preparation and conduct of military reviews of the militia, the preparation of certificates of military commands, the procedure for conducting military inspections of militias, etc. Bacon had constant contact with both the lordlieutenant of the county and with the captains of military commands, sheriffs and constables of hundreds. One of the difficult tasks that he had to solve was the collection of funds from representatives of various classes for the needs of the military teams of the county militia. In general, the magistrate managed to achieve a good level of provision of firearms for the county militias. The material of the article clearly illustrates, using the example of a separate county, some of the complexities and nuances of the “military revolution” of the early modern times in England and the role of justices of the peace in this.

Les artilleurs et la monarchie hispanique (1560-1610): Guerres, savoirs techniques, État [Artillerymen and the Hispanic monarchy (1560-1610): Wars, technical knowledge, and the State] by Brice Cossart (review).

Reviewed by: Les artilleurs et la monarchie hispanique (1560–1610): Guerres, savoirs techniques, État [Artillerymen and the Hispanic monarchy (1560–1610): Wars, technical knowledge, and the State] by Brice Cossart Emmanuel de Crouy-Chanel (bio) Les artilleurs et la monarchie hispanique (1560–1610): Guerres, savoirs techniques, État [Artillerymen and the Hispanic monarchy (1560–1610): Wars, technical knowledge, and the State] By Brice Cossart. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2021. Pp. 674. While artillery is seen as a technique with major consequences—key to the military revolution, the rise of the Modern State, and the European overseas expansion—the very nature of this technical change, its chronology, and its components still largely remain to be established (even after the pioneering works of B. S. Hall, Ph. Contamine, or B. Buchanan). Historiographic cathedrals are erected on sand. Hence the major interest of Brice Cossart's book, based on a thesis defended in 2016, which undertakes to answer the question of the mode of training and the nature of the knowledge of the artillerymen of the Hispanic monarchy in the second half of the sixteenth century. Such a formulation of the question doesn't restrict its ambition. Apart from the scale of the archival examinations that support it, the book is placed at the meeting point of important historiographical fields, which the author not only knows well but to which he makes significant contributions. His first step is to quantify the needs of the monarchy in gunners, thus revealing to what extent the expansion of a sailing navy, in particular with [End Page 1251] the "Atlantic turn," created a pressing requirement for competent gunners. He then establishes what is a "gunner" of the monarchy, which involves not only a quick but innovative study of the administration of artillery within the state apparatus, but also a sociological study combining Sevillian statistical data (based on some 400 artillery school student files and the Carrera de Indias crew registers) and the study of the careers of a few individuals. Coming generally from modest backgrounds, artillerymen had most often exercised another profession beforehand (soldier, sailor, or craftsman). The gunner's certificate, opening up new professional prospects, thus presupposed the acquisition of new technical skills. Quantitative and qualitative considerations led to the generalization of artillery schools (combining an imitation of the Italian model and local contingencies). Cossart's in-depth study of the Seville school makes it possible to identify the content of the lessons (practical, but also theoretical) and their mode of validation (especially the importance of the oral examination). Having thus established who the gunners were and what they were taught, the author proceeds to question the very notion of "knowledge" when applied to artillery. The author's thesis is that the generalization and institutionalization of artillery teaching fostered the emergence of a field of knowledge specific to artillery. Dichotomies like craftsman/scholar, technique/science, and applied/theoretical knowledge are then less significant (if at all) than interfaces such as the oral examination (which introduces abstraction and formalization into a training that could have been supposed as oriented mainly towards practice) and the treatise (which finds its economic and political justification in gunners' training needs, but which is also read, annotated, and commented on). The study of the training of the artillerymen of the Hispanic monarchy therefore leads to quite stimulating reflections on the reduction to art and technical dissemination. Its only limit—but can we blame the author?—is the lack of points of comparison to appreciate the exemplary nature of the Spanish case. How were constituted, at the same time, the field of knowledge on artillery in other states, either those with artillery schools (the Ph.D. thesis of S. Walton, The Art of Gunnery in Renaissance England, gives us an outline for England, but what about, for example, of Venice?), or those without (such as France)? Has the expansion of the navy generated elsewhere this institutionalization of gunners' training? Has the oral examination had comparable effects of formalization in other fields (navy or engineering, for example)? And what was the importance for the development of the science of artillery (the same? a different one?) of other circles, such as high-military aristocracy or engineers? Here...

Engineering of the Highest Caliber: Kazimierz Siemienowicz and the Culmination of the Military Revolution

The interregnum between the death of Galileo and the publication of Newton’s Principia produced great advances in military science and technology. Particularly noteworthy are Kazimierz Siemienowicz’s contributions to artillery and to the field of rocketry. The dominating nature of these weapon systems remain as relevant today as it did in 1650 with the publication of his opus, The Great Art of Artillery. Rocket technology defines power relations, whether fired indiscriminately across a national border or positioned menacingly in a silo as an intercontinental ballistic missile. Siemienowicz’s designs, namely his multi-stage rockets with delta-wing stabilizers and ejection nozzles, became instruments of state power. The standardization of the caliber scale, the writing of the science of artillery, the optimization of gunpowder quality, and the pioneering work in rocketry, which became his legacy, qualify him as principal in the culmination of the military revolution.

Modeling method of unmanned aerial vehicle swarm behavior based on spatiotemporal hybrid Petri net

The more and more widely used UAV swarm operations have received great attention in the new global military revolution of informatization, and the integrated modeling of UAV swarms has great significance and value for the testing and verification of combat modes. Aiming at the modeling and simulation requirements of combat scenarios, taking the collaborative combat process of heterogeneous UAV swarms as the research object, starting from the modeling of a single UAV, on the basis of the formalization and mathematical description of the single combat process, this paper employs Petri nets based on the hybridization of time and space to describe the discrete states and continuous processes of heterogeneous UAV swarm systems, and effectively solves the problems of the fusion between physics and computing processes, and modeling of interactive events in swarm systems. UPPAAL is selected to formally verify the modeling of UAV swarm strike mission, which shows that the proposed modeling method is feasible and effective.

Exploring the “Military Time”: Historical Timing, Civil–Military Relations, and the Military Revolution in Russia and Japan

Abstract What is the relationship between civil–military relations and the emergence as well as diffusion of military innovations? More precisely, how do civil–military relations affect a state's capacity for adopting military innovations? While both topics, military innovations and civil–military relations, have individually attracted considerable scholarly attention, very few studies deal with them in tandem. This study builds on the existing research on the relationship between “historical timing,” civil–military relations, and the diffusion of military reforms and advances an analytical framework that treats “time” as an explanatory dynamic, using the reception of the “military revolution” on Russia and Japan as exploratory cases. In both cases, historical timing played crucial roles in defining the “balance of [political] power” between the rulers and the existing military establishment, which then led to diverging paths in terms of adopting and internalizing the military reforms associated with the aforementioned revolution.

The Military Revolution of Peter I – Quantitative Measurement

Introduction. The article is devoted to the analysis of the processes related to the modernization of the Russian army in the times of Peter I. Owing to the magnitude and historical momentousness of these changes, we have introduced the term “revolution” in lieu of the term “reform” used hitherto in historiography. It is significant and noteworthy that these processes took place during the regular frontline military operations of the Great Northern War (1700–1721), when the tsarist army faced the perfectly organized Swedish army. Methods. So far, theories of military revolution and neo-institutional revolution have been deployed to show the transformations taking place at the time. Without denying the previous research findings, we have presented the modernization of the Russian army in the first quarter of the 18th century in quantitative terms. Hence, we have chosen three issues – recruitment, armament, and the number of officers in the army. Not only is there a sufficient source base for these issues, but they also allow for the time function in the ongoing transformations. Results. The figures under scrutiny indicate that the success of these military transformations was largely based on the recruitment system, which was superbly adapted in Russia. This made it possible not only to establish a regular national army of more than 100,000 soldiers, but also to maintain its headcount during the war despite the losses that the army suffered. In this way, almost half a million soldiers were recruited in Russia in the first quarter of the 18th century. The article emphasizes the conditions that had to be met to establish an army that could match the Swedish adversary. A key element was arming the military with modern firearms. Thanks to foreign purchases, primarily in the Netherlands, the rearmament was completed before 1709. The organizational structure of regiments, battalions, and rotas was also reorganized, so that the appropriate number of officers, non-commissioned officers, and military musicians was adjusted to the total number of soldiers. With the introduction of military discipline, it was possible to reduce the group of officers and musicians from 18.25% (1699/1700) to 10.15% (1711).