What is military science?

Military science is the process of translating national defence policy, or public policy dealing with international security and the military, to produce military capability. This is done through employing military scientists, including theorists, researchers, experimental scientists, applied scientists, designers, engineers, test technicians, and military personnel responsible for prototyping. In so doing, military science seeks to interpret policy into what military skills are required, which, by employing military concepts and military methods, can use military technologies, military weapon systems, and other military equipments. All of which will then produce the required military capability.

Military science involves creation of military theories, or the analysis of normative behavior and trends in military affairs and military history, beyond simply describing events in war and military theories, especially since the influence of Clausewitz in the nineteenth century attempt to encapsulate the complex cultural, political and economic relationships between societies and the conflicts they create. Aside from theories, concepts, methods and systems applicable to the functions and activities of the armed forces, a country’s government-sponsored defense, fighting forces, and organizations, are also involved. It is usually undertaken to increase overall military capability, defined by the Australian Defence Force as “the ability to achieve a desired effect in a specific operating environment,” by increasing efficiency, effectiveness and simplicity of complex concepts, methods and systems used in military operations, the coordinated military actions of a state on response to a developing situation, in peace during a war.

Military science is the means by which military personnel (a blanket term used to refer to members of any armed force) obtain the following: military technology, the collection of equipment, vehicles, structures and communication systems that are designed for use in warfare; weapons, also known as “arm” or “armament,” a tool or instrument used in order to inflict damage or harm to living beings–physical or mental–artificial structures, or systems; equipment; and military education and training, a process which intends to establish and improve the capabilities of military personnel in their respective roles. This is to satisfactorily provide military capability as required by the national defense policy to achieve strategic goals, used in strategic planning to define desired end-state of a war or aq campaign. It is also used to establish enemy capability as part of technical intelligence (“TECHINT”), which in a pure military context, is intelligence about weapons and equipment used by the armed forces of foreign nations (often referred to as foreign material).

In military history, military science had been used during the period of Industrial Revolution, a period from 1750 to 1850 where changes in agriculture manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times. It was used as a general term to refer to all matters of military theory and technology application as a single academic discipline, “academia,” the community of students and scholars engaged in higher education and research. This includes that of the deployment and employment of troops in peacetime or in battle.

In military education, military science is often the name of the academic department in the education institution (“higher,” “post-secondary,” “tertiary,” or third level education”), a division of a university–the stage of learning that occurs at universities, academies, colleges, seminaries, and institutes of technology–or school faculty devoted to a particular academic discipline, that administers officer candidate education/school, or “Officer Cadet School (OCS), or institutions which train civilians and enlisted personnel in order for them to gain a commission as officers in the armed forces of a country. However, this education usually focuses on the officer leadership training and basic information about employment of military theories, concepts, methods and systems, and officer graduates, a rank in some militaries of the world that is an appointed position while a person is in training to become an officer, are not military scientists on completion of studies, but rather junior military officers, a military rank, a system of hierarchical relationships in armed forces, police, intelligence agencies or other institutions organized along military lines.

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