When we talk about advanced weapons some of the most advanced were really based on previous and some of the previous on even earlier ones and so forth. Take the rocket launcher and cruise missiles. Rockets powered by gun powder were first invented by the Chinese in the 13th century in Song. This is one of the weapons which rapidly expanded throughout the world. They were in the hands of many countries by the middle of the 13th century and were used mainly as incendiary weapons. The idea was to set fire to the enemy’s structures, camps and even their soldiers if you could do it. One of the reasons why this weapon became so popular was the fact Europe and China needed weapons to defend themselves against the Mongol invaders. Some believe the first Chinese rockets were used for fireworks during celebrations. Some rockets were fitted with gunpowder bombs and were contained inside iron pots which caused a shrapnel explosion wounding and killing a group of soldiers at once.

We look at the modern railgun and think it is a futuristic weapon and in a way it is. It flings metal projectiles at a target and the force of the kinetic energy from the crash destroys the target, there is no explosive involved. It is also said to be very accurate. The catapult was an ancient weapon which hurled non-explosive rocks at a target using kinetic energy. It was improved greatly with the invention of the Trebuchet, a catapult which used weights to hurl those rocks and could hit the same spot repeatedly which much more force. If I had to draw a parallel it would be first there was the catapult which was used in earlier times by Greek, Romans and others and that was improved upon when the Trebuchet was invented and the Trebuchet was improved upon with the invention of the railgun. The railgun still has problems since every time it is fired it has a miniscule amount of the track vaporized, but scientists are working on this problem and soon there should be a railgun which will be able to fire many more rounds before the rail wears out.

When we think of airplanes we have to remember they were not the first things to fly. We credit the first balloon flight to two Frenchmen, Jacques Etienne and Joseph Michael Montgolfier. These were hot air balloons and one reached an altitude of over 6,000 feet. Balloons were improved by using gas instead of hot air and during the American Civil War these balloons were used for observation. The big breakthrough came in 1852 when the first powered balloon flight was made by Henri Giffard who had installed a 3 hp steam engine on a cigar shaped balloon, thus creating a powered blimp. In 1900 Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin invented the first rigid airship and eventually that led to the airplane. We all know there was a time when both airplanes, blimps and zeppelins all existed at the same time and were considered more or less equal until planes improved to the point the other two vehicles didn’t have a chance against them in warfare.

Submarines have a long history and can be traced back to a diving bell invented for Alexander the Great. Diving bells kept improving through the centuries, but the problem was they only could go up and down and needed an air supply. They weren’t of any use in warfare except for maybe making it possible for people to planet booby-traps. The first successful submarine was built and designed by William Bourne in 1578. It was a wooden vessel covered in waterproof leather. Buoyancy was adjusted by the use of leather bags on the side and it had a hand operated wooden screw. It had no crew area. In 1620 Cornelius Jacobszoon Drebbel improved on it and he tested his in the Thames River. Through the centuries the submarine was improved upon by Denis Papin in the late 1690s and by the time we reached the 18th century there were over a dozen patents for submarines. Russia built the first military submarine in 1720 and the first American submarine was built in 1776. In 1800 Robert Fulton designed the Nautilus and the French wanted to use it as a weapon but finally gave up on it as did the English. In 1837 a successful submarine was built in Ecuador by Jose Rodriguez Lavandera who used it to successfully cross the Guayas River in Guayaquil three times but his funding ran out. In the 1800s there were various submarines built which sank including the Hunley, the Confederate Civil War submarine. The French had made a great improvement when they launched the Plongeur because it used compressed air to power its engine, thus doing away with human power. It was too hard to control under water. The invention of the self-propelled torpedo in 1866 hastened the development of the submarine. In 1879 a submarine name the Resurgam had a steam engine built into it. It not only lacked stability, but the heat from the engine was intolerable. Submarines were put on the road to practicality when electric power was supplied for them when they traveled underwater. The submarine which led to the submarines we have today was built in 1897 by John Philip Holland and purchased by the US Navy in 1900. It used electric power for undersea travel and an internal combustion engine for surface travel.

Land mines are anything but a modern weapon. Supposedly the first person to use land mines was Zhuge Liang, Chancellor of the Kingdom of Shu. The use was reported by Jiao Yu in a book he wrote in 1412 where he claimed the land mines were planted in the 3rd century. There is a problem with this however since gunpowder wasn’t developed in China until the 10th century. If there were land mines they might have been some sort of incendiary device. Once gun powder was developed the Chinese would plant ceramic pot full of gun powder into the ground and explode them. They would also use cast iron hollow cannon balls filled with gun powder and plant those. They were said to have three kinds of gunpowder, magic gunpowder, poison gunpowder and blinding and burning gunpowder. Land mines reached Europe in 1528. In 1573 a land mine was invented which contained many black powder mortar shells. Some had tripwires. Up until the 1870s land mines were used to defend fortifications. The first modern land mines with mechanically fused high explosives were created by the Confederate Army and were the forerunners of what we use today.

It is amazing to see how modern weapons sometimes are the progression of ancient weapons with many improvements made from the first inventions to the weapons of this type we use today. We have a lot of new technology but the basic ideas seem to remain the same. Blow things up or batter them down.