Combined Arms

Lore & Background

Combined arms operations date back to antiquity, where armies would usually field a screen of skirmishers to protect their spearmen during the approach to contact. In more elaborate situations armies of various nationalities fielded different combinations of light, medium, or heavy infantry, light or heavy cavalry, chariotry, camelry, elephantry, and artillery (mechanical weapons). Philip II of Macedon and Alexander the Great greatly improved upon the limited combined arms tactics of the Greek city-states and combined the newly created Macedonian phalanx with heavy cavalry and other forces. The early Republic Roman Legion was a combined arms force and consisted of five classes of troops. The army of the Han dynasty is also an example, fielding mêlée infantry, archers, crossbowmen, and cavalry. Civilizations such as the Carthaginians and Sassanids also were known to have fielded a combination of infantry supported by powerful cavalry. At the Battle of Hastings (1066) English infantry fighting from behind a shield wall were defeated by a Norman army consisting of archers, foot soldiers, and mounted knights. The English victories of Crécy, Poitiers and Agincourt were examples of a simple form of combined arms, with a combination of dismounted knights forming a foundation for formations of English longbowmen. During the Middle Ages military forces used combined arms as a method of winning battles. The French army of the Valois kings, composed of heavily armoured gendarmes, Swiss and Landsknecht mercenary pikemen, and heavy cannons took form during the transition from the medieval way of war to the early modern period. The late 15th century saw the development of combined pike and shot formations in Europe, starting with the colunelas of the Spanish general Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, evolving into the tercios of Habsburg Spain and the Imperial Army of the Holy Roman Emperor during the 16th century. In Japan, at the battle of Nagashino in 1575, combined arms were used.

In Their Own Story

The Sherman rolls through the hedgerow at a crawl, mud caking the tracks. Inside, the driver calls out a bend to the left; the gunner's white-knuckled grip on the traverse wheel follows. The loader is already reaching for the next round, the brass cold against his palm. Through the periscope the driver spots a muzzle flash in the orchard to the right—too late, the hull shudders, a round ricochets off the mantlet. "Hull down!" the driver barks. The gunner swings the turret, finds the flash, fires. The loader slams the next shell home before the recoil has even settled. Outside, in the wet grass, a rifleman watches the barrel dip and knows he has four seconds before the next round. He does not have four seconds. He has three, and the hedgerow is twenty meters away.

Reader's Guide

According to the strategist William S. Lind, combined arms can be distinguished from the concept of 'supporting arms' as follows: Combined arms hits the enemy with two or more arms simultaneously in such a manner that the actions he must take to defend himself from one make him more vulnerable to another. In contrast, supporting arms is hitting the enemy with two or more arms in sequence, or if simultaneously, then in such combination that the actions the enemy must take to defend himself from one also defends himself from the other(s). Though the lower-echelon units of a combined arms team may be of similar types, a balanced mixture of such units are combined into an effective higher-echelon unit, whether formally in a table of organization or informally in an ad hoc solution to a battlefield problem. For example, an armoured division, the modern paragon of combined arms doctrine, consists of a mixture of mechanized infantry, tank, artillery, reconnaissance, anti-air support, drone support, close air support and helicopter units, all of which are co-ordinated and directed by a unified command structure. Also, most modern military units can, if the situation requires it, call on yet more branches of the military, such as infantry requesting space warfare, Cyberwarfare or Electromagnetic warfare support; or the bombing or shelling by military aircraft or naval forces to augment their ground offensive or protect their land forces. The mixing of arms is sometimes pushed down below the level at which homogeneity ordinarily prevails, such as by temporarily attaching a tank company to an infantry battalion.

Did You Know?

• Combined arms operations date back to antiquity, where armies would usually field a screen of skirmishers to protect their spearmen during the approach to contact.
• At the Battle of Hastings (1066), English infantry fighting from behind a shield wall were defeated by a Norman army consisting of archers, foot soldiers, and mounted knights.
• The English victories of Crécy, Poitiers and Agincourt were examples of a simple form of combined arms, with a combination of dismounted knights forming a foundation for formations of English longbowmen.
• The late 15th century saw the development of combined pike and shot formations in Europe, starting with the colunelas of the Spanish general Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba.