Improvised explosive deviceAn improvised explosive device (IED) is a bomb constructed and deployed in ways other than in conventional military action. It may be constructed of conventional military explosives, such as an artillery shell, attached to a detonating mechanism. IEDs are commonly used as roadside bombs, or homemade bombs. The term "IED" was coined by the British Army during the Northern Ireland conflict to refer to booby traps made by the IRA, and entered common use in the U.S. during the Iraq War.
HowitzerThe howitzer (ˈhaʊ.ɪtsər) is an artillery weapon that falls between cannon and a mortar. With their long-range capabilities, howitzers can be used to great effect in a battery formation with other artillery pieces, such as long-barreled guns, mortars, and rocket artillery. The English word howitzer comes from the Czech word houfnice, from houf, 'crowd', and houf is in turn a borrowing from the Middle High German word Hūfe or Houfe (modern German Haufen), meaning 'crowd, throng'. While -nice is a Czech nominal suffix.
Investment (military)Investment is the military process of surrounding an enemy fort (or town) with armed forces to prevent entry or escape. It serves both to cut communications with the outside world and to prevent supplies and reinforcements from being introduced. A contravallation is a line of fortifications, built by the attackers around the besieged fortification facing towards an enemy fort to protect the besiegers from sorties by its defenders and to enhance the blockade.
Tank classificationTank classification is a taxonomy of identifying either the intended role or weight class of tanks. The classification by role was used primarily during the developmental stage of the national armoured forces, and referred to the doctrinal and force structure utility of the tanks based on design emphasis. The weight classification is used in the same way truck classification is used, and is intended to accommodate logistic requirements of the tanks. Many classification systems have been used over a hundred years of tank history.
Barrage (artillery)In military usage, a barrage is massed sustained artillery fire (shelling) aimed at a series of points along a line. In addition to attacking any enemy in the kill zone, a barrage intends to suppress enemy movements and deny access across that line of barrage. The impact points along the line may be 20–30 yards/meters apart, with the total line length of the barrage zone anything from a few hundred to several thousand yards/meters long.
Amphibious vehicleAn amphibious vehicle (or simply amphibian), is a vehicle that is a means of transport viable on land as well as on or under water. Amphibious vehicles include amphibious bicycles, ATVs, cars, buses, trucks, railway vehicles, combat vehicles and hovercraft. Classic landing craft are not amphibious vehicles as they do not offer any real land transportation at all, although they are part of amphibious warfare. Ground effect vehicles, such as ekranoplans, will likely crash on any but the flattest of landmasses so are also not considered to be amphibious vehicles.
Network-centric warfareNetwork-centric warfare, also called network-centric operations or net-centric warfare, is a military doctrine or theory of war that aims to translate an information advantage, enabled partly by information technology, into a competitive advantage through the computer networking of dispersed forces. It was pioneered by the United States Department of Defense in the 1990s. In 1996, Admiral William Owens introduced the concept of a 'system of systems' in a paper published by the Institute for National Security Studies in the United States.
DD tankDD or Duplex Drive tanks, nicknamed "Donald Duck tanks", were a type of amphibious swimming tank developed by the British during the Second World War. The phrase is mostly used for the Duplex Drive variant of the M4 Sherman medium tank, that was used by the Western Allies during and after the Normandy Landings in June 1944. DD tanks worked by erecting a canvas 'flotation screen' around the tank, which enabled it to float in water. DD tanks would use propellers to move forward through water, then lower the flotation screens once they had reached land and fight as an ordinary tank.
Elevation (ballistics)In ballistics, the elevation is the angle between the horizontal plane and the axial direction of the barrel of a gun, mortar or heavy artillery. Originally, elevation was a linear measure of how high the gunners had to physically lift the muzzle of a gun up from the gun carriage to compensate for projectile drop and hit targets at a certain distance. Though early 20th-century firearms were relatively easy to fire, artillery was not. Before and during World War I, the only way to effectively fire artillery was plotting points on a plane.
TrenchA trench is a type of excavation or depression in the ground that is generally deeper than it is wide (as opposed to a wider gully, or ditch), and narrow compared with its length (as opposed to a simple hole or pit). In geology, trenches result from erosion by rivers or by geological movement of tectonic plates. In civil engineering, trenches are often created to install underground utilities such as gas, water, power and communication lines.
