Military

A military or military force (n.) has seen many different incarnations throughout time. Early armies were most likely men with sharpened sticks and rocks; through time they have included advancements such as men mounting horses, men wielding swords and other metallic weapons, the bow and arrow, siege weapons, the stirrup, to the advance of the musket which form the roots of the armed forces of most nations we know today. In modern times people use motorized vehicles and firearms.

While military can refer to any armed force, it generally refers to a permanent, professional force of soldiers or guerrillas—trained exclusively for the purpose of warfare and should be distinguished from a sanctioned militia or a levy, which are temporary forces— citizen soldiers with less training, who may be "called up" as a reserve force, when a nation mobilizes for total war, or to defend against invasion. The term military is often used to mean an army.

The doctrine that asserts the primacy of a military within a society is called militarism.

Etymology

It came from Latin militarius, from miles (genitive militis) = "soldier".

There is a theory that Latin miles came from Latin milium = "millet' because of them at one time being usually fed on millet.

Meaning of the word

Also see: Armed forces

As an adjective, "military" is a descriptive property of things related to soldiers and warfare. It also refers to such context dependent terms such as military reserves which may indicate an actual unit deployable on command or the general sense, of a Nation States reserve troops available to or eligible for duty in its armed forces.

In formal British English, "military" as an adjective sometimes refers more particularly to matters relating to an army (land forces), as opposed to the naval and air force matters of the other two services. In modern British English, whilst the term is still used in an exclusive sense, it has become common for the adjective "military" to describe all branches of the armed forces.

In American English, "military" as an adjective is more widely used for regulations pertaining to and between military procurement, military transport, military justice, military strength, and military force.

File:Praetorian.jpg

Statue of a Praetorian guardsman

Military history

Main article: Military history

Military history is often considered to be the history of all conflicts, not just the history of proper militaries. It differs somewhat from the history of war with military history focusing on the people and institutions of war-making while the history of war focuses on the evolution of war itself in the face of changing technology, governments, and geography.

Military history has a number of purposes. One main purpose is to learn from past accomplishments and mistakes so as to more effectively wage war in the future. Another is to create a sense of tradition which is used to create cohesive military forces. Still another may be to learn to prevent wars more effectively.

Military Organization

Main article: Military organization

Armed forces may be organized as standing forces (e.g. regular army), which describes a professional army that is engaged in no other profession than preparing for and engaging in warfare. In contrast, there is the citizen army. A citizen army (also known as a militia or reserve army) is only mobilized as needed. Its advantage lies in the fact that it is dramatically less expensive (in terms of wealth, manpower, and opportunity cost) for the organizing society to support. The disadvantage is that such a "citizen's army" is less well trained and organized.

A compromise between the two has a small cadre of professional NCOs (non-commissioned officers) and officers who act as a skeleton for a much larger force. When war comes, this skeleton is filled out with conscripts or reservists (former full-time soldiers who volunteer for a small stipend to occasionally train with the cadre to keep their military skills intact), who form the wartime unit. This balances the pros and cons of each basic organization, and allows the formation of huge armies (in terms of millions of combatants), necessary in modern large scale warfare.

See Also: Military reserve

Military science

Main article: Military science

Military science concerns itself with the study and of the diverse technical, psychological, and practical phenomena that encompass the events that make up warfare, especially armed combat. It strives to be an all-encompassing scientific system that if properly employed, will greatly enhance the practitioner's ability to prevail in an armed conflict with any adversary.

Military ideology

Main article: Militarism

Other uses of "Military"

Military procurement

Military procurement refers to common regulations and requirements for a ship or a detached unit to requisistion and draw on a base's facilies (housing, pay, and rations for detached personnel), supplies (most commonly food stocks or materials, and vehicles) by the service running a primary base; e.g. Army units detached to or staging through an air base, a vessel calling at a port near an army or air base, an army unit drawing supplies from a naval base.

Military transport

Military transport would pertain to an equipment trans-shipped via a sister service, or an individual detached for a technical school operated by a sister service, or the travel orders and authorization of such an individual to proceed via a sister services vehicles, as well as the drawing (loan of) transportation assets (staff cars, Hum-Vees, military trucks) operating from the primary base command.

Military Justice

Military Justice, as in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Most nations have a separate code of law which regulates both certain activities allowed only in war, as well as provides a code of law applicable only to a soldier in war (or 'in uniform' during peacetime).

For example, in the United States, the statutory laws set down by Congress to apply to the individual conduct within any military force of the United States are known as the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The code includes specific articles under which a soldier or sailor would be tried for infractions ranging from minor (Late Return, petty theft) to severe (Rape, Murder); this code is usually referred to by the acronym UCMJ.

Military strength

Military strength is a term that describes a quantification or reference to a nation's standing military forces or the capacity for fulfillment of that military's role. For example, the military strength of a given country could be interpreted as the number of individuals in its armed forces, the destructive potential of its arsenal, or both. For example, while China and India maintain the largest armed forces in the world, the U.S. Military is considered to be one of the world's strongest, although the certainty of such a claim cannot be ascertained without a detailed analysis of opposing military forces in relation to one another as well as taking into account the field(s) of battle and tactics used in such a conflict. Israel and the UK have also been described as the best trained and operating militaries in the world.

Military force

Military force is a term that might refer to a particular unit, a regiment or gunboat deployed in a particular locale, or as an aggregate of such forces (e.g. "In the Gulf War the United States Central Command controlled military forces (units) of each of the five military services of the United States.")....

Military brat

Military Brat (or simply Brat) refers to a child with at least one parent who served full-time in the armed forces. It implies that such an upbringing is different in important ways from that experienced by those in the community at large. The term brat, when used in this context, is neither subjective nor derogatory.

Specific militaries

See : List of militaries by country

Military alliances

NATO
ANZUS
Warsaw Pact (Now defunct)

External links

Reference

Major books for understanding the role of the military, and the civilian leadership of the military.

Why the Allies Won (WWII) by Richard Overy ISBN 0-393-03925-0
1. Many books about WWII, and other wars, focus on the military battles and campaigns. This one focuses on support roles that gave the Allies the edge when the Axis seemed to be ahead in so many senses.
2. Russia relocated their industry far from the front.
3. There was a structure of Scientific Management in the U.S.A., unheard of in the Axis Powers.
4. Axis nations military, particularly in Japan, had an adversarial relationship that was more important to them than the best interests of their nations.
5. Allied interception of coded radio signals, and strict secrecy of what they learned from this.
6. Allied sophisticated deception.
  1. Misleading Germany about the Normandy invasion.
  2. Commando raids were exceptionally successful, such as in figuring out how German Radar functioned, so as to get the correct dimensions for Chaff to Spoof it, but they were trumpeted as failures so as not to tip off German Military Intelligence about the purpose of the raids.
7. In Nazi Germany no reputable Aryan wanted to have anything to do with science that had been invented by a Jew. This is one reason why Hitler never developed the Atomic Bomb.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Pentagon by "Jeff Cateau" and Michael Levin. An entertaining explanation of the U.S. military and how it is run.
Get Yamamoto by Burke Davis, Published by Random House in 1969. During WW II, the U.S.A. intercepted top secret communications about a tour of forward bases to be conducted by Admiral Yamamoto, commander of the Japanese Navy. This led to a successful mission to intercept his flight and kill him, the theory being that the Japanese would be handicapped without his leadership.

Periodicals