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A weapon, arm or armament is any implement or device that can be used with intent to inflict damage or harm. Weapons are used to increase the efficacy and efficiency of activities such as hunting, crime, law enforcement, self-defense, and warfare
While ordinary objects – sticks, rocks, bottles, chairs, vehicles – can be used as weapons, many are expressly designed for the purpose; these range from simple implements such as clubs, axes and swords, to complicated modern firearms, tanks, intercontinental ballistic missiles, biological weapons, and cyberweaponsweaponized, such as a weaponized virus or weaponized laser
The use of objects as weapons has been observed among chimpanzees,[1] leading to speculation that early hominids[2] However, this can not be confirmed using physical evidence because wooden clubs, spears, and unshaped stones would have left an ambiguous record. The earliest unambiguous weapons to be found are the Schöningen spears[3][4][5][6][7] At the site of Nataruk in Turkana, Kenya, numerous human skeletons dating to 10,000 years ago may present evidence of traumatic injuries to the head, neck, ribs, knees and hands, including obsidian[8] But the evidence interpretation of warfare at Nataruk has been challenged.[9]
The earliest ancient weapons were evolutionary improvements of late neolithic implements, but significant improvements in materials and crafting techniques led to a series of revolutions in military technology
The development of metal tools began with copper during the Copper Age (about 3,300 BC) and was followed by the Bronze Age, leading to the creation of the Bronze Age sword
During the Bronze Age, the first defensive structures and fortifications appeared as well,[10] indicating an increased need for security. Weapons designed to breach fortifications followed soon after, such as the battering ram[10]
The development of iron-workingIron Age swords, however, as they were not superior to their bronze predecessors, but rather the domestication of the horse and widespread use of spoked[11] This led to the creation of the light, horse-drawn chariot[12] Spoke-wheeled chariot usage peaked around 1300 BC and then declined, ceasing to be militarily relevant by the 4th century BC.[13]
Cavalry[14] The horse extended the range and increased the speed of attacks.
In addition to land based weaponry, warships, such as the trireme[15]
European warfare during the Post-classical history was dominated by elite groups of knights supported by massed infantrysieges which involved various siege weaponslances providing an impact on the enemy formations and then drawing more practical weapons (such as swordsspears and billhooks in close combat and bowspikes
In Eastern and Middle Eastern
The introduction of gunpowdermusketeers, protected by pikemen came to dominate open battles, and the cannon replaced the trebuchet as the dominant siege weapon
The European RenaissanceGuns and rockets
Firearms are qualitatively different from earlier weapons because they release energy from combustible propellants such as gunpowderarquebus were much more powerfulignition mechanisms followed by revolutionary changes in ammunitionU.S. Civil War new applications of firearms including the machine gun and ironclad warship emerged that would still be recognizable and useful military weapons today, particularly in limited conflictswarship propulsion changed from sail power to fossil fuelsteam engines
Since the mid-18th century North American French-Indian war through the beginning of the 20th century, human-powered weapons were reduced from the primary weaponry of the battlefield yielding to gunpowder-based weaponry. Sometimes referred to as the "Age of Rifles",[16] this period was characterized by the development of firearms for infantry and cannons for support, as well as the beginnings of mechanized weapons such as the machine gunHowitzers were able to destroy masonry fortresses and other fortifications, and this single invention caused a Revolution in Military AffairsSee Technology during World War I
An important feature of industrial age warfare was technological escalationtechnological escalation during World War I (WW I) was profound, including the wide introduction of aircraft into warfare, and naval warfare with the introduction of aircraft carriers
World War I marked the entry of fully industrialized warfare as well as weapons of mass destruction (e.g., chemical and biological weaponsmaneuver warfaremilitary technologies underwent before and during the Second World War
This period of innovation in weapon design continued in the inter-war period (between WW I and WW IISchneider-Creusot (based in France), the Škoda Works (Czechoslovakia), and Vickers[17]
Realistic critics understood that war could not really be outlawed, but its worst excesses might be banned. Poison gas became the focus of a worldwide crusade in the 1920s. Poison gas did not win battles, and the generals did not want it. The soldiers hated it far more intensely than bullets or explosive shells. By 1918, chemical shells made up 35 per cent of French ammunition supplies, 25 per cent of British, and 20 per cent of the American stock. The “Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous, or Other Gases and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare” ["Geneva Protocol"] was issued in 1925, and was accepted as policy by all major countries. In 1937 poison gas was manufactured in large quantities, but not used except against nations that lacked modern weapons or gas masks.[18][19]
Many modern military weapons, particularly ground-based ones, are relatively minor improvements of weapon systems developed during World War IISee military technology during World War II World War IIatomic bomb
Since the realization of mutually assured destructionCold War in the years following World War II, both the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a nuclear arms racelimited wars rather than total war[20]
During the late 2010s, tensions between the West and the East escalate as nuclear-based issues arise. Such event has been since dubbed as Cold War II[21][22]
The arms industry is a global industry that involves the sales and manufacture of weaponry. It consists of a commercial industry involved in the research and development, engineering, production, and servicing of militaryindustrialized countries
Contracts to supply a given country's military are awarded by governments, making arms contracts of substantial political importance. The link between politics and the arms trade can result in the development a "military-industrial complex
According to research institute SIPRI, the volume of international transfers of major weapons in 2010–14 was 16 percent higher than in 2005–2009[24], and the arms sales of the world’s 100 largest private arms-producing and military services companies totalled $420 billion in 2018.[25]
The production, possession, trade and use of many weapons are controlled. This may be at a local or central government
All countries have laws and policies regulating aspects such as the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession, modification and use of small arms by civilians.
Countries which regulate access to firearms will typically restrict access to certain categories of firearms and then restrict the categories of persons who may be granted a license for access to such firearms. There may be separate licenses for hunting, sport shooting (a.k.a. target shooting), self-defense, collecting, and concealed carry, with different sets of requirements, permissions, and responsibilities.
International treaties and agreements place restrictions upon the development, production, stockpiling, proliferation and usage of weapons from small arms and heavy weapons to weapons of mass destruction
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Arms trafficking is the trafficking of contraband weapons and ammunition
There are a number of issue around the potential ongoing risks from deployed weapons, the safe storage of weapons, and their eventual disposal when no longer effective or safe.
Strange and exotic weapons are a recurring feature or theme in science fiction[1] Other science fiction weapons remain purely fictional, and are often beyond the realms of known physical possibility.
At its most prosaic, science fiction features an endless variety of sidearms, mostly variations on real weapons such as guns and swordsphaser used in the Star Trek television series, films and novels and the lightsaber and blaster featured in the Star Wars movies, comics, novels and TV series.
In addition to adding action and entertainment value, weaponry in science fiction sometimes become themes when they touch on deeper concerns, often motivated by contemporary issues. One example is science fiction that deals with weapons of mass destruction