Before/After

>>33532496
Machine guns

The bayonet, explosive artillery shells, the machine gun and tanks. In roughly that order.

>>33532496
Air strikes

Basically when infantry went from being the killer to the babysitter in firefights

>>33532496
Probably

0) Rapid-fire, reliable, accurate artillery guns.

1) Machine guns + barbed wire.

2) Tanks / armoured vehicles capable of crossing fields / trenches.

3) The portable radio - Backpack sized or hand held.

4) Viable infantry anti-tank weapons that worked. RPG's and shit.


As to when we changed from rank and file to squad based?


Arguably before WW 1 in the case of certain nations, just that this had not filtered to the highest levels or throughout all of their forces.

It should be noted that the transfer from file and ranks was caused by the radio and multiple other developments.

The fact that each squad could reliably communicate up the chain of command no matter what resulted in them no longer needing to remain and act in blocks.

However, we see an earlier attempt by giving units "runners" to transfer orders between their commanders.


>>33532767
This too, planes changed how everything worked. Admittedly, we might see that too change someday but not yet...

Cartridges and magazines/clips containing multiple rounds.

>>33532496

The moment where such infantry tactics are often said to have been mature and in wide-scale use is the Ludendorff Offensive, in the Spring of 1918. This was as a response to the circumstances of WW1 warfare, though developments had been made through preceding wars (US Civil War, Franco-Prussian War, Russo-Japanese War, Boer Wars).

To get to today where the use of line infantry is completely unthinkable, there have been so many different developments:

1. Individual weight of fire
2. Artillery support & CAS
3. Logistics & strategic mobility
4. Communication technology
5. Tactical mobility of forces
6. Aerial Reconnaissance
7. Air interdiction
8. Armoured vehicles
9. Camouflage of personnel, equipment, and fighting positions.
10. Operational independence of low level units.

>>33532496
Magazine fed rifles and belt fed machine guns, so WW 1 . You could see it coming in The American Civil War. The defensive power of infantry had out reached offensive tactics being used.

>>33532496
>technological inventions and the impact they had on the way fighting is done.

Reliably preserving food
The Lister bag
Penicillin

Not necessarily in that order.

>>33532496
Smokeless powder and fully jacket spitzer bullets.

Like the French Lebel.

>>33532496
Rifling

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>>33532496
Kind of not the answer you were looking for, but was probably communications related. Mainly the use of the telegraph via utility poles during the Civil War.

>>33532496

I want to say smokeless powder.

Smokeless powder meant fouling was much less of an issue and the engagement range of infantry could be lengthened by no insignificant degree. More importantly, the lack of fouling meant that rifles started to become progressively faster in fire rate, going from bolt actions to semi auto, to full auto being given to common infantry in a remarkably short period of time. It was with this subsequent development that machine gun and DMR tactics really came into their own. In fact, had we never developed smokeless, reasonably powerful and ubiquitous intermediate cartridges would have never become a thing.

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>>33532496
>>33537319
I'd say radio actually. I mean shit, at Gallipoli, the soldiers who landed on the beaches made it to their objectives and had no idea what to do next. They couldn't move or else they'd be hit with their own artillery.
Radio communications is the reason why troops don't have to attack in open lines anymore and small unit tactics can be utilized for all operations and not just trench raids. You could divide the men into squads that report to their immediate superior who could radio back to the NCOs and officers for updates on their next objectives. Battles could be tracked in a much more "real time" sense. Before that, the squad leader would have to be able to shout to the NCOs, and in an age where machine guns and rifles were getting better and better, that meant massacres for people attacking in open ranks.

>>33532496
So much went on to where we are now- logistics with preserved food, radio comms, air-mobility, motorised infantry, artillery, reliable firearms, load bearing gear, medicine etc.

What a lot of people ignore and focus on technology though, is the simple fact that in a modern first world army you're so heavily trained, have good nutrition, health care and all these support mechanisms which let us take on nearly any challenge via combined warfare. If for example you're 6 guys in a mountainous region and come across a column of 200 enemy, you can kill them all with one set of co-ordinates and a call on the radio.
But think of all the navigation skills, specialist warfare training for multiple environments, techniques for getting through enemy lines and back out again. Modern infantry are far more capable than people give them credit for, running and gunning is a part of that, but there's a lot that goes into making a modern soldier- all that knowledge passed down from previous generations, fuck ups and successes is ultimately the thing that makes them better than the previous iteration.

>>33537226
>Rifling
Invented in 1498 in Germany. Literally a medieval technology, older than the Musket.