Military science is the study of military processes, institutions, and behavior, along with the study of warfare, and the theory and application of organized coercive force. It is mainly focused on theory, method, and practice of producing military capability in a manner consistent with national defense policy. Military science serves to identify the strategic, political, economic, psychological, social, operational, technological, and tactical elements necessary to sustain relative advantage of military force; and to increase the likelihood and favorable outcomes of victory in peace or during a war. Military scientists include theorists, researchers, experimental scientists, applied scientists, designers, engineers, test technicians, and other military personnel.
Military personnel obtain weapons, equipment, and training to achieve specific strategic goals. Military science is also used to establish enemy capability as part of technical intelligence.
In military history, military science had been used during the period of Industrial Revolution as a general term to refer to all matters of military theory and technology application as a single academic discipline, including that of the deployment and employment of troops in peacetime or in battle.
In military education, military science is often the name of the department in the education institution that administers officer candidate education. However, this education usually focuses on the officer leadership training and basic information about employment of military theories, concepts, methods and systems, and graduates are not military scientists on completion of studies, but rather junior military officers.
History of military science and Military history
Even until the Second World War, military science was written in English starting with capital letters, and was thought of as an academic discipline alongside physics, philosophy and the medical sciences. In part this was due to the general mystique that accompanied education in a world where, as late as the 1880s, 75% of the European population was illiterate.
