Military Geography
Military geography is a sub-field of geography that is used by the military, as well as academics and politicians, to understand the geopolitics, geopolitical sphere through the military lens. To accomplish these ends, military geographers consider topics from geopolitics to physical locations’ influences on military operations and the cultural and economic impacts of a military presence. On a tactical level, a military geographer might put together the terrain and the drainage system below the surface, so a unit is not at a disadvantage if the enemy uses the drainage system to ambush it, especially in urban warfare. On a strategic level, an emerging field of strategic and military geography seeks to understand the changing human and biophysical environments that alter the security and military domains. Climate change, for example, is adding and multiplying the complexity of military strategy, planning and training. Emerging responsibilities for the military to be involved in: ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sand
Sand is a granular material composed of finely divided mineral particles. Sand has various compositions but is usually defined by its grain size. Sand grains are smaller than gravel and coarser than silt. Sand can also refer to a textural class of soil or soil type; i.e., a soil containing more than 85 percent sand-sized particles by mass. The composition of sand varies, depending on the local rock sources and conditions, but the most common constituent of sand in inland continental settings and non-tropical coastal settings is silica (silicon dioxide, or SiO2), usually in the form of quartz. Calcium carbonate is the second most common type of sand. One such example of this is aragonite, which has been created over the past 500million years by various forms of life, such as coral and shellfish. It is the primary form of sand apparent in areas where reefs have dominated the ecosystem for millions of years, as in the Caribbean. Somewhat more rarely, sand may be composed ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Military Geography
Military geography is a sub-field of geography that is used by the military, as well as academics and politicians, to understand the geopolitics, geopolitical sphere through the military lens. To accomplish these ends, military geographers consider topics from geopolitics to physical locations’ influences on military operations and the cultural and economic impacts of a military presence. On a tactical level, a military geographer might put together the terrain and the drainage system below the surface, so a unit is not at a disadvantage if the enemy uses the drainage system to ambush it, especially in urban warfare. On a strategic level, an emerging field of strategic and military geography seeks to understand the changing human and biophysical environments that alter the security and military domains. Climate change, for example, is adding and multiplying the complexity of military strategy, planning and training. Emerging responsibilities for the military to be involved in: ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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George Etzel Pearcy
George Etzel Pearcy (May 2, 1905 – June 28, 1980) was an American geographer known for his plan to re-draw the United States map to have only 38 states. He also published influential work on America's global role in stewardship over the air. Early life and education Pearcy was born in Greencastle, Indiana, on May 2, 1905, to George William and Dora Hodge Pearcy. He received his B.E. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1932, followed by an A.M. and Ph.D. from Clark University in 1933 and 1940, respectively. Career Pearcy was an American Field Service fellow from 1933 to 1934. He joined the faculty of the University of Alabama in 1939, where he taught until 1942. He then worked as a geographer for Trans World Airlines from 1943 to 1950. From 1950 to 1957, he was an attache for the United States Foreign Service, after which he became the geographer for the State Department. From 1965 to 1969, he was the chairman of the United States Board on Geographic Names. In 196 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Military Geology
Military geology is the application of Geologist, geological Geology, theory to warfare and the peacetime practices of the military. The formal practice of military geology began during the Napoleonic Wars; however, Geotechnical engineering, geotechnical knowledge has been applied since the earliest days of Siege, siege warfare. In modern warfare military geologists are used for terrain analysis, engineering, and the identification of resources. Military geologists have included both specially trained military personnel and civilians incorporated into the military. The peacetime application of military geology includes the building of infrastructure, typically during local emergencies or foreign peacekeeping deployments. Warfare can change the physical geology. Examples of this include artillery shattering the bedrock on the Western Front (World War I), Western Front during World War I and the detonation of nuclear weapons creating new rock types. Military research has also led to ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Defence In Depth
Defence in depth (also known as deep defence or elastic defence) is a military strategy that seeks to delay rather than prevent the advance of an attacker, buying time and causing additional casualties by yielding space. Rather than defeating an attacker with a single, strong defensive line, defence in depth relies on the tendency of an attack to lose momentum over time or as it covers a larger area. A defender can thus yield lightly defended territory in an effort to stress an attacker's logistics or spread out a numerically superior attacking force. Once an attacker has lost momentum or is forced to spread out to pacify a large area, defensive counter-attacks can be mounted on the attacker's weak points, with the goal being to cause attrition or drive the attacker back to its original starting position. Strategy A conventional defence strategy would concentrate all military resources at a front line, which, if breached by an attacker, would leave the remaining defenders in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Strategic Depth
Strategic depth is a term in military literature that broadly refers to the distances between the front lines or battle sectors and the combatants' industrial core areas, capital cities, heartlands, and other key centers of population or military production. Concept The key precepts any military commander must consider when dealing with strategic depth are how vulnerable these assets are to a quick, preemptive attack or to a methodical offensive and whether a country can withdraw into its own territory, absorb an initial thrust, and allow the subsequent offensive to culminate short of its goal and far from its source of power. Commanders must be able to plan for both eventualities, and have measures and resources in place on both tactical and strategic levels to counter any and all stages of a minor or major enemy attack. The measures do not need to be limited to purely-military assets since the ability to reinforce civilian infrastructure or make it flexible enough to withst ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Natural Lines Of Drift
Natural lines of drift are those paths across terrain that are the most likely to be used when going from one place to another. These paths are paths of least resistance: those that offer the greatest ease while taking into account obstacles (e.g. rivers, cliffs, dense unbroken woodland, etc.) and modes of transit (e.g. pedestrian, automobile, horses.). Common endpoints or fixed points may include water sources, food sources, and obstacle passages such as fords or bridges. Local paths may be derived from game trails or from artificial paths created by utility lines or political boundaries. Property ownership and land use may also be factors in determining local variation. Improved paths may also be partially defined by the logistics necessary to build roads or railways. See also *Desire path *Footpath *Trail A trail, also known as a path or track, is an unpaved lane or a small paved road (though it can also be a route along a navigable waterways) generally not inten ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Geostrategy
Geostrategy, a subfield of geopolitics, is a type of foreign policy guided principally by geographical factors as they inform, constrain, or affect political and military planning. As with all strategies, geostrategy is concerned with matching means to ends. Strategy is as intertwined with geography as geography is with nationhood, or as Colin S. Gray and Geoffrey Sloan state it, " eography isthe mother of strategy." Geostrategists, as distinct from geopoliticians, approach geopolitics from a nationalist point of view. Geostrategies are relevant principally to the context in which they were devised: the strategist's nation, the historically rooted national impulses, the strength of the country's resources, the scope of the country's goals, the political geography of the time period, and the technological factors that affect military, political, economic, and cultural engagement. Geostrategy can function prescriptively, advocating foreign policy based on geographic and historical ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Loss Of Strength Gradient
The loss-of-strength gradient (LSG) is a military concept devised by Kenneth E. Boulding in his 1962 book ''Conflict and Defense: A General Theory''. He argued the amount of a nation's military power that could be brought to bear in any part of the world depended on geographic distance. The loss of strength gradient demonstrated graphically that, the further away the target of aggression, the less strength could be made available. It also showed how this loss of strength could be ameliorated by forward positions. Decreasing relevance Boulding also argued that the loss-of-strength gradient was becoming less relevant in modern warfare due to easier transportation and the rise of strategic air and missile power. He claimed that a 20th-century "military revolution The Military Revolution is the theory that a series of radical changes in military strategy and tactics during the 16th and 17th centuries resulted in major lasting changes in governments and society. The theory was int ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Military Crest
Military crest is a term in military science that refers to, "An area on the forward or reverse slope of a hill or ridge just below the topographical crest from which maximum observation and direct fire covering the slope down to the base of the hill or ridge can be obtained." The military crest is used in maneuvering along the side of a hill or ridge to provide the maneuvering force maximum visibility of the terrain below and minimize their own visibility by not being silhouetted against the sky, as it would be at the actual or topographical crest of the hill.U.S. Army Field Manual, FM 3-97.61, 8-4.d(2)a Observation posts (OPs) can be located at the military crest if the main defensive position is located on the reverse slope of the hill or ridge, as is usually done if the main defensive position would be vulnerable to the enemy's artillery if located at the military crest, making coordinated withdrawal difficult. The main defensive position can be located at the military cres ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Digital Camouflage
Multi-scale camouflage is a type of military camouflage combining patterns at two or more scales, often (though not necessarily) with a digital camouflage pattern created with computer assistance. The function is to provide camouflage over a range of distances, or equivalently over a scale invariance, range of scales (scale-invariant camouflage), in the manner of fractals, so some approaches are called fractal camouflage. Not all multiscale patterns are composed of Pixelation, rectangular pixels, even if they were designed using a computer. Further, not all pixellated patterns work at different scales, so being pixellated or digital does not of itself guarantee improved performance. The first standardized pattern to be issued was the single-scale Italian ''telo mimetico''. The root of the modern multi-scale camouflage patterns can be traced back to 1930s experiments in Europe for the Wehrmacht, German and Red Army, Soviet armies. This was followed by the Canadian development of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |