In these last days of the bloodiest century man has known, some have suggested that the advent of modern, technologically advanced weapons, particularly those employing stealth technology and precision guided munitions, have fundamentally changed the face of battle. Now the advantage, especially presently to the United States, is so overwhelming, so powerful, that warfare has become lopsided. Massive destruction and enormous casualties can be inflicted on the enemy at extremely low cost in American lives. Indeed, the new standard of success in war as far as the American public is concerned, set in the skies over Serbia and Kosovo, is no loss of life while winning with overwhelming advantage. To use a sports metaphor, we are no longer interested in military contests that secure victory 109 to 107 in double overtime. No, 109 to 0 is just fine. Anything less, apparently, might get the coach fired. In the Gulf War, estimates of Iraqi losses range from as low as 9,000 upwards to 100,000, while the United States suffered 147 killed in action. While the estimates of Serbian losses in the war over Yugoslavia are still to be determined, the most striking news is that during the 79 days of the air war, the NATO coalition didn't lose anyone to combat action. The effects of technological advantages between combatants are as old as the battlefield. And the apparent lopsidedness afforded the possessors of the new technologies was often stunning. But if there is one lesson to be learned from the study of war during the last thousand years, it would be that no technological advantage lasted as long as the possessor hoped. Secret weapon: the longbow
Outnumbered by more than two to one, the English faced the French in 1346 at the battle of Crécy, early in the Hundred Years War. The French led their attack with infantrymen armed with crossbows. These crossbowmen from Genoa were considered to be the best in all of Europe. Developed just as the millennium began, the crossbow itself was considered by many historians as perhaps the most significant weapon introduced in medieval times. So deadly was the crossbow that Pope Innocent II prohibited its use; so overwhelming in its power and lethal in its application that the pope declared that the crossbow was "hateful to God and unfit for Christians." (That was, until later, when it was determined that the crossbow was just fine to use in killing Muslims.) It was with the crossbow that the French opened their attack. Regrettably for the French, their commanders weren't keeping up with the technological advances of their enemy. The English, under Edward III, had developed the longbow as a military weapon in preparation for their invasion of France. The longbow had greater range than the crossbow, so when Genoese crossbowmen let their arrows fly, they fell harmlessly short of the massed Englishmen. In response the English archers let fly a devastating volley of arrows. At a cost of 43 Englishmen and "a few dozen Welsh," the English decimated the French, killing over 11,000 of them. Throughout the millennium this story of advanced technology playing a central role in subduing the vanquished repeats itself. In the summer of 1588, the Spanish Armada with its 130 ships and over 30,000 men greatly outnumbered Queen Elizabeth's navy. With only 34 warships the English relied on technological advantages in ship design that gave them superior speed and maneuverability over the enemy. Armed with another key piece of advanced weaponry, the long-range naval cannon, the English navy could attack the Spanish decisively without having to rely on the accepted method of grappling the enemy ship alongside and boarding the enemy vessel for a final fight with naval infantry. On July 29 alone, the Spanish suffered over 8,000 casualties, their fleet all but destroyed. The British lost none of their ships and only 60 men. More destructive force, but less death?
These kinds of overwhelming results at sea, along with similar ones on land, contributed to the notion that was widely accepted well into the 1600s that gunpowder h