Military Forces

The development of breech loading had the greatest effect on naval warfare, for the first time since the Middle Ages altering the way weapons are mounted on warships, and therefore naval tactics, now divorced from the reliance on sails with the invention of the internal combustion. A further advance in military naval technology was the design of the submarine and its weapon, the torpedo.
During World War I the need to break the deadlock of the trenches saw the rapid development of many new technologies, particularly the tanks and military aviation. Military aviation was extensively used, and particularly the bombers during the World War II, which marked the most frantic period of weapons development in history. Many new designs and concepts were used in combat, and all existing technologies were improved between 1939 and 1945.
During the war significant advances were made in military communications through use of radio, military intelligence through use of the radar, and in military medicine through use of penicillin, while in the air the missile, jet aircraft and helicopters were seen for the first time. Perhaps the most infamous of all military technologies was the creation of the atomic bomb, although the effects of radiation were unknown until the early 1950s. Far greater use of military vehicles had finally eliminated the cavalry from the military force structure.
After World War II, with the onset of the Cold War, the constant technological development of new weapons was institutionalized as participants engaged in a constant arms race in capability development. This constant state of weapons development continues into the present, and remains a constant drain on national resources, which some blame on the military-industrial complex.