In 1904 Japan launched a surprise attack on a Russian fleet anchored in Port Arthur. Port Arthur is located in the Lüshunkou District of China. This district and the greater Manchuria region would be the location of a slugfest between the infantry, cavalry, and artillery of Japan and Russia until September, 1905. The cause and the outcome, a Japanese victory, is not regarded with much historical notoriety. What is notable is the how the conflict acted as the writing on the wall for how the the coming global conflict in 1914 would be fought. Like most writings on walls, it was mostly ignored by those who needed to heed it.
At the outset of the Russo-Japanese War nearly every major technological innovation that would be used in WWI was also at play in Manchuria, save the airplane (this was insignificant given the lack of beagles and barons in China at the time). The battles in Manchuria acted as a proving ground for new strategies stemming from technological changes. One of these new strategies was the use of indirect fire, the shooting of artillery from far off positions at unseen enemy using locations provided by forward observers. Traditionally, artillery sections would duke it out on the field of battle much like the infantry did: slinging rounds across the battle at the other side until one caved. With the advent of the technology enabling indirect fire, field artillery was safe from enemy guns and pivoted to being an anti-infantry weapon. The result of this change was the frequent use of trenches. Now that the artillery could extend it's eyes with forward observers and target enemies from unseen hills, the infantry responded by digging defensive positions to shelter from the thundering shells. The necessity of trenches in response to field artillery were quickly noted by the militaries of the world. Not all lessons were so quickly internalized.
One of the most stark military changes since the Russo-Japanese War has been the complete removal of horseback cavalry. The horse as a weapon has reached near complete obsolescence. This obsolescence wasn't fully realized until 1917, but the Cossacks thrown into battle by Russia against newly minted machine guns nested in Japanese trenches could have assured it back in 1904.
The first sign of the cavalry's last days came in South Africa where a young war correspondent named Winston Churchill reported on The Boer War. There, attention was drawn to the havoc a rapidly firing machine gun could cause on lines of men on large horses approaching it in straight lines. In response to the newly rumored end of their beloved branch, cavalry officers from England closely monitored the role that Russian and Japanese cavalry played in winning their nation's battles. The cavalry officers of Britain were looking for events to point to that proved their worth. Most of them believed that they were still a military necessity and all that was needed was a modern battle to prove it. John Ellis, in The Social History of the Machine Gun, summarized the feeling amongst cavalry officers at the time:
War was still a matter of will, in which the grit and resolution of the individual soldier counted for much more than any piece of machinery. Anything that was not compatible with this conception, anything that seemed to threaten the centrality of man upon the battlefield, was dismissed an being an unmilitary gimmick.
They were wrong. The cavalry was butchered by machine gun fire and played an almost nonexistent part in the outcome of The Russo-Japanese War. They did little besides waste resources and get shot. One would imagine the response of cavalrymen around the world would have been to immediately argue for the hanging up of spurs and switching to safer, more expedient tactics. For the most part they did the opposite. Cavalry officers would repeatedly defend the use of horses in the pages of prominent military journals. Slight strategy changes were adopted by the British cavalry such as the carrying of machine guns into battle in addition to the traditional arme blanche. The real tactical changes to the cavalry would be piecemeal responses to the destruction they suffered at the hands of machine guns. The lessons were available to be gleaned during 1904, but they were not internalized until they were learned in the face of machine gun fire.
From September to November of 2020, Azerbaijan and Armenia escalated a decades long series of clashes into a full scale war over the long contested Nagorno-Karabakh region between the two countries. The roots of the conflict stretch back into the past. The short war may provide a glimpse into how future wars will be fought.
Videos have been released by Azerbaijan leading up to and following their victory. They demonstrate how they destroyed an alleged litany of Armenian armored vehicles who could not defend themselves from remote controlled enemies above. Since the fighting stopped, critics and defenders of the future of tanks in warfare have stepped up to assess what the conflict really means. Some assert that armor is over; others argue that very little has changed and that the destruction of the tanks says more about the competence of the users than the technology used by their attackers. There is not enough evidence to convince either side of the debate that they are wrong. The conflict was not long enough and the participants were not significant enough as world powers to definitively say "this is what the future of warfare looks like."
Like The Russo-Japanese War, it is difficult for observers to decide what facets of the conflict were happenstance resulting from terrain and specific combatants, and what are new norms that are here for good. Neither side in the debate has sufficient evidence to persuade the other. When will the correct side of the debate be proven to be right? When there's overwhelming evidence in the form of a victory or defeat so stunning that ignoring it is suicide.
In 1917, the Germans occupied their last great defensive position of the first world war: The Hindenburg Line. It was a 90 mile series of trenches running through France. The 10th Hussars, a British cavalry regiment, were ordered to charge and take the line at the city of Arras. The regiment charged straight into barbed wire and machine gun fire. They lost two thirds of their men. The 10th Hussars would return to France 22 years later to face down Nazi Germany. This time with Crusader Tanks, not horses.
It took personally experiencing suicide missions for the cavalry regiments of the world to abandon their trusted horses and reorient to armored vehicles. It was impossible for the armies of the world to justify the abandonment of mounted cavalry without these experiences. It may only be after a conflict of mass proportions involving tanks, not before, that the wrong side of the tank debate will be convinced.