Acoustic Weapons: In World War II, underwater weapons were fitted with a sensor which would detect the sound of a ship's propellers. The sensor would steer a torpedo towards the ship or, if fitted to a mine, detonate it when it was close enough to the ship's hull.
Agent Orange: A selective weedkiller, notorious for its use in the 1960s during the Vietnam War by US forces to eliminate ground cover which could protect enemy forces. It was subsequently revealed that it contained a highly poisonous dioxin. Thousands of US troops who had handled it, along with many Vietnamese people that came into contact with it, later developed cancer or went on to have deformed babies.
Aircraft Carrier: An oceangoing navel vessel with a broad, flat-topped deck for the purpose of launching and landing military aircraft. It is a floating military base for warplanes too far from home for refueling, repairing, reconnaissance, escorting, and attack and defense operations. Aircraft are catapult-launced or take off and land on the flight deck, a large expanse of unobstructed deck, often fitted with barriers and restraining devices to halt the landing aircraft.
Armored Fighting Vehicle (AFV): A powered vehicle using wheels or chain tracks for motion, and mounting armor plate for protection against small arms and artillery fire, mines, and grenades. A weapons system incorporating machine guns or automatic cannon, missiles, or main-armament artillery is ususally an integral part of the vehicle. AFVs can be divided into four main types: Tanks, Armored Cars, Armored Personnal Carriers, and Self-Propelled Artillery.
Armored Personnel Carrier (APC): A wheeled or tracked military vehicle designed to transport up to ten people. Armored to withstand small-arms fire and shell splinters, it is used on battlefields.
Atomic Bomb: A bomb deriving its explosive force from nuclear fission as a result of a neutron chain reaction, developed in the 1940s in the United States into a useable weapon. The atomic explosion over the Japanese city of Nagasaki, on August 9, 1945, was caused by the bomb known as "Fat Man". It exploded at about 245m (800ft) above the city. It's 1.13kg (2.5lbs) of plutonium producing an explosion equivalent to more than 200,000 tons of TNT.
Battleship: A class of large warships with the biggest guns and heaviest armor. In 1991, four US battleships were in active service. They are not all decommissioned.
Bazooka: US 2.36in caliber rocket launcer fired from the shoulder. A lightweight tube with simple sights, it fires a fin-stabilized rocket containing a shaped charge warhead.
Binary Weapon: Used in chemical warfare, this is a weapon consisting of two substances that, in isolation, are harmless, but when mixed together form a ponious nerve gas. They are loaded into the delivery system separately and combine after launch.
Bomb: A container filled with explosive or chemical material and generally used in warfare. There are also incendiary bombs and nuclear bombs and missiles. Any object designed to cause damage by explosion can be called a bomb (car bombs, letter bombs). Initially dropped from airplanes (from WWI), bombs were in WWII also launced by rocket (V1, V2). The 1960s saw the development of missiles that could be launched from aircraft, land sites, or submarines. In the 1970s laser guidance systems were developed to hit small targets with accuracy.
Browning Automatic Rifle: A US light machine gun used for infantry support, adopted by the US Army in 1917 and standard issue until the early 1950s. It used a 20-shot magazine and fired at 500 rounds per minute.
Destroyer: A small, fast warship designed for anti-submarine work. Destroyers played a critical role in the convoy system in WWII.
Enhanced Radiation Weapon: Another name for the neutron bomb.
Explosive: Any material capable of a sudden release of energy and the rapid formation of a large volume of gas, leading, when compressed, to the development of a high-pressure wave (blast).
Firearm: A weapon from which projectiles are discharged by the combustion of an explosive. Firearms are generally divided into two main sections: artillery (ordnance or cannon), with a bore greater than 2.54cm (1in), and small arms, with a bore of less than 2.54cm (1in). Although gunpowder was known in Europe 60 years previously, the invention of guns dates from 1300 to 1325, and is attributed to Berthold Schwartz, a German monk.
Frigate: An escort warship smaller than a destroyer. Before 1975 the term referred to a warship larger than a destroyer but smaller than a light cruiser. In the 18th and 19th centuries, a frigate was a small, fast sailing warship.
Fuel-Air Explosive: A warhead containing a highly flammable petroleum and oxygen mixture; when released over a target, this mixes with the oxygen in the atmosphere and produces a vapor which, when ignited, causes a blast approximately five times more powerful than conventional high explosives.
Gas Shell: An artillery projectile carrying a chemical agent, first used during WWI. The explosive is contained in a central cylinder and the remaining space filled with liquefied gas so that the explosion is sufficient to release the gas and allow it to disperse without disintegrating it.
Grenade: A small missile containing an explosive or other charge, usually thrown (hand grenade), but sometimes fired from a rifle. Hand grenades are generally fitted with a time fuse of about four seconds: a sufficent amount of time for the grenade to reach the target but not enough for the enemy to pick it up and throw it back.
Howitzer: A cannon that has been in use since the sixteenth century. It has a particularily steep angle of fire that made it optimal for the use in the destruction of trench fortresses in WWI. The multinational NATO FH70 field howitzer is mobile and can fire, under computer control, three 43kg/95lb shells, at a 32km/20mi range, within 15 seconds. Historically, howitizers fire shells with a high, arching trajectory, but in this century many designs have fired high-speed shells with a low trajectory.
Hydrogen Bomb: A bomb that works on the principle of nuclear fusion. The large-scale explosion results from the thermonuclear release of energy when hydrogen nuclei are fused to form helium nuclei. The first hydrogen bomb was exploded at Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific Ocean by the United States in 1952.
Incendiary Bomb: A bomb containing inflammable matter, it is usually dropped by aircraft. Both incendiary bombs, and its close relation, the incendiary shell were used during WWI against ground and Zeppelin targets. In WWII these bombs were used as a major weapon in attacks on cities, causing widespread destruction. To hinder firefighters, delayed action, HE bombs were usually dropped with them. In the Vietnam War, U.S. forces dropped napalm in incendiary bombs on airstrikes across jungle terrain.
Machine Gun: A rapid-firing, automatic gun. The Maxim, named for it's inventor, the US born British engineer H.S. Maxim (1840-1916), of 1884 was recoil-operated, but later models have been gas-operated (Bren) or recoil assisted by gas (some versions of the Browning).
Magnetic Mine: A navel mine detonated by the magnetic field of a ship passing over or alongside.
Mine: An explosive charge on land or sea, or in the atmosphere, designed to be detonated by contact, vibration (for example from and enemy engine), magnetic influence, or a timing device. Countereasures include metal detectors (useless for plastic types), specially equipped helicopters, and (at sea) minesweepers. Mines were first used at sea in the early 19th century, during the Napoleonic Wars; landmines came into use in WWI to disable tanks.
Minesweeper: A small navel vessel used for locating and destroying or disactivating mines at sea. A typical minesweeper weighs about 725 tons and is built of reinforced plastic which is immune to magnetic and acoustic mines. Remote-controlled miniature submarines may be used to lay charges next to the mines and destroy them.
Missile: A rocket-propelled weapon, which may be nuclear-armed, modern missiles are often classified as surface-to-surface missiles (SSM), air-to-air missiles (AAM), surface-to-air missiles (SAM), or air-to-surface missiles (ASM). A cruise missile is in effect a pilotless, computer-guided aircraft; it can be sea-launched from submarines or surface ships, or launched from the air or the ground.
Molotov Cocktail: A home-made weapon consisting of a bottle filled with gasoline, plugged with a rag as a wick, ignited, and thrown as a grenade. Resistance groups during WWII named them for the Soviet foreign minister Molotov.
Napalm: A fuel used in flamethrowers and incendiary bombs, it is produced from jellied gasoline and is a mixture of naphthenic and palmitic acids. Napalm causes extensive burns because it sticks to the skin even when aflame. It was widely used by the US Army during the Vietnam War and by Serb forces in the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Neutron Bomb: A small hydrogen bomb for battlefield use that kills by radiation with minimal damage to buildings and other structures.
Patriot Missiles: A ground-to-air medium-range missile syste used in air defense. It has high-altitude coverage, electronic jamming capability, and excellent mobility. US Patriot missiles were tested in battle against Scud missiles fired by the Iraqis in the 1991 Gulf War. They successfully intercepted 24 Scud missiles out of about 85 attempts.
Remotely Piloted Vehicle (RPV): A crewless, mini-aircraft used for military surveillance and to select targets in battle. RPVs barely show up on rader, so they can fly over a battlefield without being shot down, and they are equipped to transmit TV images to an operater on the ground. RPVs were used by Israeli forces in 1982 in Lebanon and by the Allies in the 1991 Gulf War. The US system is called Aquila and the British system Phoenix.
Rifle: A firearm that has spiral grooves (rifling) in its barrel. When a bullet is fired, the rifling makes it spin, thereby improving accuracy over increased distance. Rifles were first introduced in the late 18th century.
Scorpio: The name given to a small, rapid-fire ballista (stone-shooting machine), used, mainly, by the Romans in the first and second century BC.
Scud: Soviet-produced, surface-to-surface missile that can be armed with a nuclear, chemical, or conventional warhead. The Scud-B, deployed on a mobile launcher, was the version most commonly used by the Iraqi army in the Gulf War. It is a relatively inaccurate weapon.
Semtex: Plastic explosive, manufactured in the Czech Republic. It is safe to handle as it can only be ignited by a detonator and difficult to trace since it has no smell. It has been used by extremist groups in the Middle East and by the IRA in Northern Ireland.
Siphon: A weapon used on medieval Byzantine ships to shoot inflammale Greek fire against enemy ships. No examples survive, but it was apparently a brass tube into which the fuel was sucked and then expelled by a pair of bellows.
Smart Weapon: A programmable bomb or missile that can be guided to its target by laser technology, TV homing technology, or terrain-contour mapping (TERCOM). A smart weapon relies on its pin-point accuracy to destroy a target rather than on the size of its warhead.
Stealth Technology: Methods used to make an aircraft as invisible as possible, primarly to radar detection but also to detection by visual means and heat sensors. This is achieved by a combination of aircraft-design elements: smoothing off all radar-reflecting sharp edges; covering the aircraft with radar-absorbant materials; fitting engine coverings that hide the exhaust and heat signatures of the aircraft; and other, secret, technologies.
Tank: An armored fighting vehicle that runs on tracks and is fitted with weapons systems capable of defeating other tanks and destroying life and property. The term was originally a code name for the first effective tracked and armored fighting vehicle, invented by the British soldier and scholar Ernest Swinton, and first used in the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
TASM: An abbrevation for tactical air-to-surface missile with a range of under 500km/300mi and a nuclear warhead. TASMs are being developed independently by the US and France to replace the surface-to-surface missiles being phased out by NATO from 1990 on.
Torpedo: A self-propelled, underwater missile, invented in 1866 by British engineer Robert Whitehead, modern torpedos are actually homing missiles; some resemble mines in that they can lie on the seabed until activated by the acoustic signal of a passing ship. A television camera enables them to be remotely controlled, and in the final stage of attack they lock onto the radar or sonar signals of the target ship.
U-boat: (German - Unterseeboot "under-sea boat") A German submarine, the term was used in both world wars when U-boat attacks posed a great threat to Allied shipping.
V1, V2: (German - Vergeltungswaffe "revenge weapons") The German flying bombs of WWII, launched against Britain in 1944 and 1945. The V1, also called the doodlebug and buzz bomb, was an uncrewed monoplane carrying a bomb, powered by a simple kind of jet engine called a pulse jet. The V2, a rocket bomb with a preset guidance system, was the first long-range ballistic missile. It was 14m/47ft long, carried a 1.1 ton warhead, and hit its target at a speed of 5,000kph/3,000mph.
Warship: A fighting ship armed and crewed for war. The supremacy of the battleship at the beginning of the 20th century was rivaled during WWI by the development of submarine attack and was rendered obsolete in WWII with the advent of long-range air attack. Today the largest and most important surface warships are the aircraft carriers.
