The Art of War: How Artillery Shaped Battlefields Across Centuries

When the basics aren't working, you call in the big guns. It's true in business, in politics, and just about everywhere else, but there's a reason the expression comes from warfare, and in warfare, it matters most of all. There are regular weapons, and the fighting troops that wield them; and then, there are really big, really powerful, and really destructive weapons — the things that can force a battlefield to go silent, or convince a fortress to cower and yield. These are the very intimidating, and very lethal pieces of kit known as artillery. Understanding how it works, why it matters, and how it has changed the course of history reveals why, after centuries upon centuries of artillery warfare, it has proved that it's going nowhere.

Key Takeaways

During World War I, approximately sixty percent of all battlefield casualties were caused by the explosion of artillery shells.
The Gustav Gun, Germany's heaviest mobile artillery piece, weighed 1,350 metric tons, required 250 crew to assemble, and fired eighty-centimeter shells up to forty kilometers.
In Ukraine, eighty percent of casualties on both sides are believed to be the direct result of artillery fire, demonstrating artillery's continued dominance.
Prior to a major American aid bill in 2024, Russia had Ukrainian artillery in some areas operating at a ten-to-one disadvantage in shells.
The United States did not add a single artillery shell to its arsenal between summer 2014 and fall 2015, reflecting NATO's neglect of ammunition stockpiles.
The first European use of artillery-sized cannons occurred near Crecy during the Hundred Years War under England's Edward III against forces of Philip VI of France.

The Method: How Artillery Works on the Battlefield

Whether discussing a fifteenth-century cannon, a World War I heavy gun, or a modern-day mobile howitzer, the idea behind artillery is the same. It's a ranged weapon, one that uses explosives of some kind in order to launch projectiles in ways that lone infantry are simply not capable of. Artillery projectiles are far larger than an infantry soldier could shoot out of a gun; artillery pieces are far larger than an infantry soldier could carry; and the effects of artillery are far greater in their destructive potential than anything that an individual soldier, or even a group of them, could achieve at range. Before the days of aerial bombing and precision-guided missiles, artillery was the best way, by far, to take down large static targets like a castle or a fort. Across time, it has remained the most effective way to do mass damage to vulnerable targets, via the use of unguided explosives or solid projectiles at large scale. Whether a cannon used at close range or a howitzer fired at fifteen kilometers, artillery relies on the use of a ballistic arc, firing at an angle to bring munitions crashing down on an enemy position. Artillery is used in one of two primary ways: suppression and destruction. Destruction is exactly what it sounds like — taking big, heavy guns, aiming them at something you want destroyed, and bombarding it until very little, if anything, remains in the aftermath. A military force might be attempting to destroy a fortress or a castle; they might be trying to destroy an industrial center or a swath of agricultural lands; or, at times, they may have human targets. Perhaps they want to shell an enemy trench full of soldiers until it becomes uninhabitable, or launch explosive rounds into the path of an oncoming battalion, or perhaps they're looking to cause civilian casualties, leveling a town or a city. Regardless of the specific target, artillery is very good at causing destruction wherever it's aimed, and bigger guns, and better rounds, typically lead to a considerably bigger bang. With that destructive factor comes the ability to instill fear in an opposing force, and the potential to create a psychological element that makes victory considerably more likely.

Suppression, Denial, and the Limits of the Big Guns

On the other side of the artillery coin is suppression. Suppressive artillery fire still has destructive potential, but perhaps the easiest way to think about it in layman's terms is by creating an area of denial. Imagine an army captain, getting ready to break troops out of a concealed area behind a tree-line and cross a big, open field. The troops can go left, right, or up the middle, but if the adversary has artillery, they can make that choice a whole lot easier. If they keep up constant artillery fire on the left and right corners, then any crossing must go down the middle, regardless of whatever mines, trenches, machine-gun nests, or anything else might be waiting. Suppressive artillery uses that same basic concept to achieve a wide range of battlefield results. Artillery that can fire at considerable ranges can have the convenient effect of keeping enemy artillery away, by threatening the same areas where those enemy guns would have to be placed in order to get into their own effective range. Artillery can be focused at a group of enemy troops already camped out at a certain point, sometimes fired at an intensity meant to force them to flee, or sometimes fired in a scatter around their positions to keep them from going anywhere. And at times, artillery can even be a way of creating a barrier, constantly shelling a line of territory or a specific area in order to make it impassable for enemy troops. Suppressive fire often leads to fewer enemy losses, but enemy losses aren't always the point. It's one piece in a broader puzzle, and using artillery in creative and sometimes indirect ways can often bring about battlefield successes greater than what artillery shells on their own should be capable of achieving. That being said, artillery certainly has its limits, primarily because of just how much of a blunt instrument it typically is. Artillery is imprecise by nature, and although artillery observers on the ground, aircraft in the skies, or intelligence sources in a target area can all work to raise artillery's precision, it's still tough to use with any pinpoint accuracy. It takes time to deploy, it takes time to dismantle, and it's usually most effective when used in bulk. A single artillery piece can certainly have an effect, but slow rates of fire and lack of precision mean that it's generally much more useful to aim a dozen artillery pieces at a certain zone and reduce it to rubble. And if the goal of artillery is to destroy, then it's very good at doing a mostly-complete job, but less good at finishing the job all by itself. Any artillery bombardment will leave relatively unscathed patches behind, and once artillery pieces create enough rubble, they're left to just keep hammering what they've already destroyed, with little ability to hit anything, or anyone, hidden underneath or behind it. When artillery is used to its true destructive potential, it's best backed up by sweeper teams of infantry, who can move into shelled areas and clear out the enemy fighters who will almost certainly have survived the long-range bombardment.

Towed, Self-Propelled, and the Crews That Operate Them

Modern artillery — developed during World War I or anytime after — comes in two basic types: towed and self-propelled. Towed artillery can take many forms, from the small guns that might get carried behind an infantry-carrying truck, to incredibly big artillery pieces that need entire trains to carry them around. Fixed artillery can grow to some truly massive sizes, sometimes even being broken down and carried to an area where they're needed in pieces, before being assembled onsite and put into action. Self-propelled artillery, by contrast, is usually mounted on the chassis of a truck or a tank, capable of folding up into a travel position and getting wherever it needs to go under its own power. Self-propelled artillery sacrifices size by default; it can only ever get so big before becoming too cumbersome and inefficient to be worth building, but it makes up for that size limitation with enhanced mobility. Capable of showing up in unpredictable locations, and sometimes firing only a couple of rounds before moving on, self-propelled artillery gives a level of versatility and rapid response that can be sorely lacking in larger pieces. Just as important as the guns themselves are the people that operate them. Artillery pieces typically require crews, including gunners who actually load and position the artillery, commanders who coordinate the operation and figure out where to fire from, artillery spotters who identify targets and aim the artillery, and whichever individual has the pleasure of actually firing the thing. While it's certainly possible for individual gun crews to operate by themselves, roving across the landscape and coordinating decentralized operations from afar, it's more common for multiple gun crews to combine into the main unit of artillery: the battery. Artillery batteries may also have scouts, infantry-style cleanup crews, or other support personnel, and they might have as few as just two or three artillery pieces, or half a dozen or more. The general idea is the same: artillery takes a whole lot of hands to operate, and artillery pieces are typically at their best when operating together, not one by one.

From Ancient Ballistas to the Hundred Years War

Prior to the advent of explosives-launched artillery, ancient artillery pieces took several shapes. Gigantic crossbow-style weapons called the ballista could fire huge projectiles against enemy infantry, while catapults, and later, trebuchets, could sling heavy stones that were capable of bringing down castle walls. But explosive artillery traces its history back to China, where ancient writers and artists chronicled the use of basic rockets nearly two thousand years ago. In Europe, the first record of a formula for gunpowder emerged in the ninth century, while the technology used to cast cannons came along a good bit later. It's difficult to conclusively identify the first use of a cannon in battle, partially because it's difficult to draw the line between a proper cannon and a proto-cannon, but the distinction most likely would go to a battle in China, if the historical record could conclusively establish an answer. In Europe, the answer is a good bit clearer. The first use of artillery-sized cannons — rather than small hand cannons used by the Mamluks against the Mongols — came early in the Hundred Years War near Crecy, when Genoese mercenaries fighting for Philip VI of France came under artillery fire from somewhere around five to twenty cannons under the control of England's Edward III. The cannons were, to put it kindly, quite poor, and they didn't have any real impact on the battlefield, but their psychological effect was far greater. Smashing, flashing, and booming across the battlefield, the cannon was unlike anything the Genoese and the French had experienced, and although it was English longbows and the swords of both sides that won the battle, the cannon certainly played its role. Before long, cannons were common across Europe, and European methods of cannon-casting were transferred back eastward, bringing the technology to China and other warring groups across the centuries. Early on, cannons fired everything from shaped stones to really big arrows and sometimes, just whatever a military could shove down the barrel and explode out of it. Typically mounted on two-wheeled carriages and towed by horses, cannons advanced in their technology slowly but steadily, until by the 19th century, the materials, the ammunition, and the tactics required to operate them had all advanced to a point of serious sophistication. By then, people had realized that different calibers, different gunpowder recipes, and different types of ammunition all mattered. Ammunition made of scattering iron pellets could devastate infantry formations but was useless against thick walls, while heavy, solid shells were imprecise but more than capable of busting through serious static defenses. And just as important as understanding the use of ammunition was understanding the ballistic arc, something that a range of societies worked out with their own mathematicians, on their own time.

Portuguese, Ming, and Javanese Innovations in Artillery

Across the centuries, a few societies stood out for their ability to advance artillery technology in leaps and bounds. The Portuguese made excellent use of the technology during their conquests across Africa and Asia, both at sea as the primary tool of power for their naval armadas, and in land assaults against a range of fortified adversary strongholds. Not only did the Portuguese Empire figure out how to make naval artillery work for them, but they devoted substantial resources toward developing dedicated siege weaponry and dedicated anti-personnel cannons, along with howitzer-style, ballistic-firing cannons that could fire cannonballs of a weight up to four thousand pounds — 1,800 kilograms. Over in China, the Ming Dynasty had a similar approach, but worked to devise a system in which their light cannons were fired in volleys, capable of smashing and battering large infantry formations and peppering enemy fortifications in an early use of suppressive, rather than destructive fire. The people of Java had tremendous success in casting large, medium-sized, and small artillery guns as well as hand cannons, even giving Portuguese and Spanish imperial forces a rough go when the Europeans realized they weren't the only artillery-equipped powers in town. The transition to modern artillery came around the mid-to-late nineteenth century, as militaries figured out how to use steel in the construction of larger artillery pieces and worked out another critical improvement: breech-loading. Breech-loaded guns allowed ammunition to be inserted at the butt end, rather than shoved down the muzzle, and that key advancement, along with the introduction of rifling — drawing grooves inside a firearm's barrel to make the projectile spin — opened up a whole world of possibilities. Now, guns could get a lot bigger, they could fire a lot further, they could use more powerful explosives, and they were significantly more precise. The first popular rifled artillery piece was the British Armstrong gun, manufactured starting in 1855, and once the British had the technology, other empires raced to acquire it. The following few decades would see various militaries figure out things like indirect fire and long-range shelling.

World War I: Sixty Percent of All Casualties

It was only in the early 20th century that modern artillery would be put to the test, in a war that was far greater and more ruinous than anyone of the time had expected: World War I. Over the course of the war, some sixty percent of all battlefield casualties would be caused by the explosion of artillery shells. Direct hits were common, and it wasn't unusual for soldiers to be pulverized, but wounds by shrapnel were, by far, the bigger problem. Shells coming down and exploding would send shards of twisted metal in every direction, with the damage they caused to the human body ranging from terrifying to downright horrific. The shrapnel was by design, too; in a war that saw troops stuck in trenches for months on end, anything that either side could do to reduce the number of troops in an enemy trench made the next incremental advance that much more likely to succeed. During World War I, artillery got absolutely gigantic. The German gun nicknamed the Big Bertha would pave the way for the introduction of super-heavy artillery. The Big Bertha could fire eight shells an hour at a distance of nearly ten kilometers, with a caliber of 420 millimeters — forty-two centimeters, or seventeen inches. Far more troubling in practice, though, were the ubiquitous medium-size guns that rained destruction down on all sides. The war saw major advancements in artillery tactics, like rolling bombardments that swept slowly across an area, as well as type, including the introduction of anti-aircraft artillery. Artillery batteries learned how to fire beyond their visual range, deliver effective fire at map-designated zones, and eventually, reduce what had initially been a horrific rate of friendly-fire incidents. The one thing that didn't really get worked out was how to fuse artillery and infantry operations into combined assaults, and instead, World War I would see a rock-paper-scissors effect between the two. Although artillery would subject infantry to horrific effects across many battlefields during the war, perhaps the most iconic was the Battle of Verdun, where over the span of nearly ten months, almost a million German and French soldiers would be fed into a meat grinder. At Verdun, infantry were sent by both sides to face artillery bombardments that made the landscape look as if it were the surface of the Moon, in the simple hope that the other side would run out of human bodies first.

World War II: The Gustav Gun and the Eastern Front

If World War I was humanity's grand introduction to the capabilities, and the horror, of large-scale artillery, then World War II was when those lessons were put into practice. Per a retired British major general writing in 2004, some sixty-one percent of Soviet casualties and seventy percent of German casualties on the Eastern Front were caused by artillery, and the technology was everywhere across North Africa and Europe. The Pacific Theater saw less in the way of land-based artillery, instead relying on heavy naval guns, but the European Theater relied on artillery on all sides. It also saw the introduction of the heaviest mobile artillery piece in history, the Gustav Gun, introduced by Germany in order to destroy the fortifications of the French Maginot Line. With only two copies built, the Gustav Gun weighed in at 1,350 metric tons, capable of firing eighty-centimeter, or thirty-one-inch shells for a range of roughly forty kilometers. It took 250 crew to assemble, it had to be transported by railroad, and it could fire up to one round every thirty minutes at its absolute best, although it usually hit a firing rate of about fourteen shells a day. What German artillery tended to bring in size and firepower, American forces in the west tended to make up for with accuracy and high rates of fire, while Soviet forces in the east dealt with the problem through sheer tenacity, holding on and sacrificing immense numbers of human lives despite fighting at the bad end of an ammunition and artillery-piece discrepancy. That was a hard lesson for the Soviets to learn at the time, and one they really only dealt with via human sacrifice — but it would be a lesson the Soviets would internalize, and that their descendants would never forget.

Cold War Conflicts: From the Ogaden to the Toyota War

Artillery is not just a facet of major wars, either today or in the past. While artillery was on full display in Korea, Vietnam, or Afghanistan during Cold War conflicts, it has also been a mainstay of much smaller wars. In some cases, like the Ogaden War between Ethiopia and Somalia, artillery provided the grounds for a steamrolling; in that war, the far better artillery-equipped Somalian forces were able to out-range and outmaneuver their Ethiopian adversaries, and when Ethiopia finally turned the tides, it was because they had received some seriously impressive Soviet artillery and were able to rely on surprise barrages to clear the way for infantry and armored assaults. Artillery was an albatross around the neck of fighting forces that didn't know what to do with it. In the Toyota War of the 1980s between Libya and Chad, Libyan forces had a substantial artillery advantage, but were weighed down by those heavy weapons, and were unable to respond when they came under attack from Chadian forces using machine guns on the backs of pickup trucks. For wars big and small across the 20th century, artillery has been a mainstay, and often, it's the degree to which a given military can use its artillery that determines whether they succeed or fail. These smaller conflicts demonstrated a critical lesson about artillery: possessing it is not enough. The ability to deploy it effectively, to integrate it with other forces, and to avoid being encumbered by it all matter as much as the raw firepower itself.

Russia, Ukraine, and the Return of Artillery-Centric Warfare

When it comes to modern-day artillery, the only correct place to begin is Russia. It's a reality that the world is used to, after watching years of bitter fighting in Ukraine, but just a couple of years ago, conventional wisdom was that the modern Russian Federation was wasting its time with all of its focus on artillery. Twenty-first-century wars would be fought with stealth planes, long-range missiles, and special operations forces. As it turns out, Russia has proved that even modern militaries must bow to respect artillery. Howitzers and field guns are absolutely essential to Russian military strategy, something that the nation has shown in Chechnya, in Georgia, in the Ukrainian Donbas, and now, in its full-scale war. Russia relies on massed firepower — the use of a lot of artillery, all at once, pretty much indiscriminately, in order to chew through enemy defenses and leave nothing behind. If American military doctrine when taking a city block is to use precision explosives and infantry to take that city block apart and find the people there, then Russian doctrine calls for turning the city block into rubble, and then parking a Russian flag on it once nothing is left. The goal isn't to enable other battlefield maneuvers; the goal is to kill and destroy. Those tactics have proven effective in Ukraine and elsewhere, and they're the tried-and-true methods Russia has been forced to turn to after its operations both in Chechnya, and in Ukraine, didn't go to the new-age, high-minded plans that the generals at the time had cooked up. Whether Russia happens to be denying it or embracing it on a given day, the nation's greatest military strength is its ability to leverage incredible artillery firepower, especially when complete devastation of infrastructure and the indiscriminate killing of civilians aren't seen as a barrier to effective military offense. The Russian military, at its best, puts artillery at the center of its approach: air defenses and warplanes to keep the artillery safe, infantry units to swarm over areas that artillery has softened, and the relentless pounding of shells into whatever target happens to be within range. In Ukraine, eighty percent of casualties on both sides are believed to be the direct result of artillery fire.

The Ammunition Crisis and NATO's Scramble to Catch Up

When Russia fights its artillery war, its adversaries are forced to do the same in order to keep up, especially in places like Ukraine, and perhaps someday soon the nations of NATO, where the loss of civilian life and the destruction of infrastructure are seen as the worst possible outcome. In that fight, NATO and Ukraine have realized Russia is able to back up its artillery with another critical capability: its ability to manufacture simply enormous levels of ammunition. In Russia's artillery war, nothing else matters except the rate at which a country can expend its firepower without running out. The best counter to an artillery-based enemy force is counter-artillery to keep them at bay, but organize an entire defense around counter-artillery, and you'd best not run out of shells. For all its military flaws, Russia is fantastic at sucking enemies dry through this form of attritional warfare. In Ukraine, prior to the passage of a major American aid bill in 2024, Russia had Ukrainian artillery in some areas operating at a ten-to-one disadvantage in artillery shells, meaning that for all intents and purposes, Russia could put artillery wherever it wanted and hammer Ukrainian positions into dust. With Russia's wartime economy lurching into action, it's clear that the nation and its leaders believe that a full investment into this warfare gives it the best chance at future victories — and the military-industrial side of the NATO alliance is now scrambling to try and catch up. In those same NATO nations, artillery has been something of an afterthought for a decade. In the United States, not a single artillery shell was added to America's arsenal between summer 2014 and fall 2015. European nations have relied on stockpiles of military shells that assumed far smaller future wars than Russia has proven capable of creating, to the point that many nations' artillery stockpiles would run out in the span of just a few weeks if they were to have to fight the sort of war Ukraine currently is. Not only that, but production factories have largely shut down, especially in Europe, meaning that it will take years to even get production lines in order to replenish stocks, let alone fill them up. These are issues that NATO is now working to solve, but Russia has proven its ability to suck adversary nations into the sorts of conflict where, quite simply, nothing else matters.

Artillery as Insurance: Smaller Nations and the Wars of the Future

Around the world, artillery takes on a different purpose than it does among major military powers considering a future war. Artillery is a fixture of much smaller militaries as well, and in many cases, it's the centerpiece of their plans for national defense. Countries that will never field a stealth fighter or a guided-missile cruiser can still pick up a whole lot of surplus artillery on the international arms market, and despite some advancements, the general idea of point-and-shoot artillery really hasn't changed much. To give an idea of what some of these smaller nations rely on, El Salvador in Central America fields several dozen American- and Yugoslav-made howitzers from the mid-20th century; Mozambique in Africa fields well over a hundred mostly Soviet-era howitzers and field guns; and Cambodia, in Asia, has more than four hundred field artillery pieces in its arsenal. None of those nations are going to be steamrolling their neighbors anytime soon, but for all of them, the presence of several batteries of basic, effective field artillery is an excellent insurance policy if their security is ever threatened. When it comes to the wars of the future, the degree of artillery involvement almost certainly won't be stable. In some nations' ideal war plans, artillery is nearly an afterthought — take the United States and its preference for strategic air operations, or China and its developing capabilities for rapid amphibious assaults. For other nations, not just Russia but nations with an arsenal like Russia's, artillery is everything. But the trick of artillery, in the modern day, is this: if one side is going to rely on artillery, then it's the job of their adversary to figure out how they can take that artillery out of the fight. If they can bomb it from the air, sabotage it from the back lines, or capture it in rapid flanking attacks — great. They won't have to fight an artillery war. But if they lack the means to destroy the enemy's artillery, then they're going to have to meet it on the battlefield, and if they've reached that point in a conflict, then they're going to need enough of their own artillery to go head-to-head. Otherwise, they're facing the slow, endless grind of a rolling barrage, carving a path of destruction that very little, if anything, will be able to withstand long enough to fight back.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why can't Ukraine join NATO?

Ukraine's bid to join NATO is complex and involves various geopolitical factors, including its historical ties with Russia and the Russian Federation military's opposition to NATO expansion, as seen in the actions of leaders like Putin, who has been critical of NATO's involvement in Eastern Europe, and Yeltsin, who had a more nuanced view of NATO during his presidency, with Ukraine's relations with NATO dating back to the 1990s, and the country's desire to join the alliance being influenced by its strategic location between Europe and Russia.

Which statement best describes the overall effects of new technologies such as poison gas and improved artillery during World War I?

The introduction of new technologies like poison gas and improved artillery during World War I significantly altered the nature of warfare, rendering traditional castle technology obsolete, as noted by historians, and leading to the development of trench warfare, which was characterized by the use of occupied lines and military trenches, resulting in a stalemate on the Western Front, with both sides suffering heavy casualties, including over 37 million casualties, and a significant shift in the balance of power, with the war ultimately ending on November 11, 1918, with the signing of the Armistice of Compiègne.

How did soldiers protect themselves from the powerful artillery fire during World War I?

During World War I, soldiers protected themselves from powerful artillery fire by using trenches, which were dug into the ground to provide cover from enemy fire, with the trenches often being 6-8 feet deep and lined with sandbags, and the use of barbed wire, machine guns, and other defensive measures to prevent enemy advances, as well as the development of new technologies like gas masks, which were first used in 1915, and helmets, like the Brodie helmet, which was introduced in 1915, and the use of underground bunkers and dugouts to escape the intense artillery bombardments, which could last for days or even weeks, with the longest artillery bombardment of the war lasting 7 days and 7 nights during the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

What is NATO and what is their purpose?

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an intergovernmental military alliance between 32 member states, including 30 in Europe and 2 in North America, with its primary purpose being to provide a collective defense against potential security threats, promoting stability and cooperation among its member states, and fostering a sense of unity and cooperation among its members, with NATO's founding treaty, the North Atlantic Treaty, being signed on April 4, 1949, in Washington, D.C., and the alliance's headquarters being located in Brussels, Belgium, with NATO's membership having grown from its original 12 founding members to 32 members today, including countries like the United States, Canada, and many European nations.

Is the US in NATO now?

Yes, the United States is one of the founding members of NATO and has been a member since the alliance's inception in 1949, with the US playing a significant role in NATO's decision-making processes and contributing to the alliance's military operations, including the deployment of US troops to NATO member countries, such as Germany, Italy, and Poland, and the participation of US forces in NATO-led missions, like the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan, which was established in 2001 and ended in 2014, with the US having contributed over 100,000 troops to the mission at its peak.

Who runs NATO?

NATO is led by a Secretary General, who is appointed by the North Atlantic Council, the alliance's supreme decision-making body, with the Secretary General being responsible for the overall direction and management of NATO, including its political and military affairs, and the current Secretary General being Jens Stoltenberg, a former Prime Minister of Norway, who has been in office since October 2014, and has played a key role in shaping NATO's response to emerging security challenges, including the crisis in Ukraine and the rise of terrorism, with NATO's leadership also including a Deputy Secretary General, a Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), and a Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (SACT), among others.

What did Napoleon call his artillery?

Napoleon Bonaparte, the French military leader, referred to his artillery as the 'God of War', recognizing the significant impact that artillery had on the battlefield and the importance of effective artillery tactics in achieving military victories, with Napoleon's artillery playing a key role in many of his battles, including the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805, where his artillery helped to secure a decisive victory over the combined Austrian and Russian armies, and the Battle of Borodino in 1812, where his artillery clashed with the Russian artillery in a bloody and intense battle, with over 65,000 casualties on both sides.

Why is artillery called the god of war?

Artillery is often referred to as the 'God of War' due to its ability to inflict massive destruction and chaos on the battlefield, with its powerful guns and explosives capable of leveling cities and fortifications, and its impact on the course of history, having been a decisive factor in many battles and wars, including the Napoleonic Wars, World War I, and World War II, with artillery's destructive potential and psychological impact on enemy forces earning it a reputation as a powerful and feared weapon, and its role in shaping the modern battlefield, with the development of new artillery technologies, such as precision-guided munitions and drone-based artillery, continuing to evolve and expand the capabilities of artillery on the battlefield.