History and Application of Projectile Motion in Military and Warfare

Projectile motion plays an instrumental role in military weaponry, strategy and war tactics. It was only with the development of the gun in the fourteenth century that soldiers and their commanders started to consider the implications of projectile motion (Walley, 2018). However, projectile weaponry such as bows and arrows, javelins, trebuchets and catapults had already been utilised in battle for centuries before then (Ratra, 2014).

The ancient Egyptians are said to be the first to use the bow and arrow for hunting or battle (Ratra, 2014). Over time, many adaptions have been made to the bow and arrow to allow for greater accuracy and durability. The bows were made stronger so that they could shoot the arrows further, and arrows were streamlined to counteract the air resistance, to improve their accuracy (Ratra, 2014). At the time the warriors did not need to consider Aristotle’s original theory of projectile motion and could improve their skills with their projectile weapons (spears or bows) with practice alone (Walley, 2018). Even so, the fact that they adapted their weapons to be more aerodynamic to gain greater accuracy proves that they were aware of the consequences of air resistance in the projectile motion of their weapons.

It was with the development of gun powder that armies started to really consider the theory of projectile motion (Walley, 2018). This is because gunpowder was expensive, and the link between the desired effect (trajectory) and bodily effort and training of the soldiers were starting to weaken. Along with the invention of guns came the need to know what angle to orientate the barrel, and how much gun powder (propellent) to use (Walley, 2018). However, for the first years after the invention of firearms, guns and cannons were generally unreliable, because the barrels were not manufactured to fit the lead pellets/cannons properly; which led to unpredictable trajectories (Ratra, 2014).

As the cannon grew in popularity in warfare, early scientists concluded that the trajectory of a cannon is parabolic (Jennings, 2012). This observation inspired the very earliest ideas of the modern projectile motion theory. Scientists could now start to calculate possible trajectories using mathematics (Walley, 2018). This became very important in the military as soldiers could now calculate the angle at which to fire a cannon to reach the maximum range, or achieve the maximum accuracy.

Projectile motion is still an essential aspect of the modern-day military. Ballistics (the study of gunfire patterns and the movement of ammunition) is important in the military to improve their soldiers’ shooting ability (Gun Shots, 2018). Weapon makers use ballistics to craft guns and ammunition which have a higher chance of accuracy if fired correctly. World War 2 fighter pilots used projectile motion to calculate the right time to drop a bomb as they were flying over cities so that the bombs would make the maximum impact (Melnik, 2017). Tank operators need to calculate the correct velocity and angle at which to fire a missile for it to hit their target (Anon., 2009). Even modern-day missiles, bombs or nuclear weapons that are launched remotely have their trajectories calculated and encoded using the theory of projectile motion, so that they would hit their respective targets.