Original subtitles

From concrete bunkers

to vast underground railways,

machine guns capable of firing

thousands of rounds a minute,

to precision lasers able to instantly

neutralize a threat,

intercept fighters to armor plating,

the machinery of war with the ability to attack

are almost worthless without the machines that protect.

Without defense, there would be no battle,

only surrender.

This is the story of defense.

(upbeat music)

When flimsy aircraft first appeared above the battlefields

of World War I,

few could have imagined the influence they would have

on the shape of war.

In less than 20 years,

they went from curiosities,

to weapons of incredible destructive force.

World War II had initiated a new chapter in aerial warfare

and to combat that threat,

nations on both sides looked to ways

to defend their airspace,

in the air and from the ground.

Amongst the German arsenal of anti-aircraft weapons

were a variety of small caliber

light artillery pieces for low level attacks.

For aircraft operating at higher altitudes,

it'd developed a weapon that became simply known

as the 88.

A supreme anti-aircraft gun that had two aims.

The first was to keep the bombers high

rather than letting the bombers come lower

and be more accurate

and the second most to kill bombers.

There were belts of 88s,

both on the approaches to major German cities

but also along the coast,

so that the allied bombers had to cross

literally bands of heavy and accurate anti-aircraft fire

to approach the cities who have the right to bomb them.

(Blasts)

The secret of the 88's power

lay first of all in its caliber.

At 88 millimeters, it was a very large exploding shell

fired with a timer

that meant it would detonate at a set altitude.

But it also had a very long barrel

which gave it a very high muzzle velocity.

And with it, the ability to fire a shell

to an altitude of more than 7,500 meters,

well within the target range for most bombers.

But what would really set the 88 apart,

was its rate of fire.

So instead of having to load the shell

and cite the gun each time,

the crop automatic loading meant that

they could fire 15 to 20 shots a minute,

which meant that you can literally put up a barrage.

So a battery of four guns could put up 80 shells

in the course of a minute.

Which is a wall of steel

which the aircraft have to fly through.

It's the technical capacity of

the German armaments engineers in the 1930s

that are actually defending the Reich into the 1940s.

Over 20,000 German 88 were produced

including variants and modifications

derived from lessons learned in action.

The German 88 millimeter gun

is one of the most extraordinary

artillery weapons of all time.

Every nation developed a heavy anti-aircraft weapon,

and none of them were as good as the 88

and the British and the Americans

never had a gun to match the 88's capacities.

While the 88 may have been

a supreme weapon in its time,

the development of attacking machines waits for no weapon.

The character of war at sea has produced new threats

that demand evermore sophisticated means of protection.

(upbeat music)

On the 2nd of April, 1982,

Argentine forces mounted amphibious landings

off the British colony of the Falkland islands.

The British and the Argentine forces squared off

in what was essentially a war at sea.

What became immediately obvious to both sides

was that in maritime warfare, things had changed.

And the key to that change

was the introduction of the anti-ship missile.

Ships were incredibly vulnerable to these systems.

If you couldn't shoot down the aircraft

or you couldn't take out the host ship

before the anti-ship missile was launched,

you were in a sense helpless.

While militaries around the world

had known of the dangers

of anti-ship missiles,

the loss of six British warships

during the Falklands conflict

offered the first real world example

of their potential destructiveness.

What was needed to combat that threat

was a last-ditch defense system.

And for a last-ditch defense,

you need something that's incredibly fast and responsive.

A system capable of destroying an inbound missile in flight

on the last line.

The Phalanx CIWS is such a weapon.

The Phalanx is an automated close in weapon system,

built around the Vulcan six barrel Gatling auto Cannon.

In use since the late 1950s on US attack aircraft,

the Vulcan fires heavy 20 millimeter shells

at the astonishing rate of 4,500 rounds per minute.

Housed in an entirely self-contained targeted mountain,

the gun is linked to an automated radar fire control system

that enables it to automatically seek,

detect, track and engage incoming targets.

A task it can perform entirely autonomously.

It doesn't require a human in the loop.

It will simply pick up the target,

fire at it and destroy it.

And because it has this enormous rate of fire,

it's effective against things like

incoming anti-ship missiles,

but even large artillery shells.

The advantages of

an autonomous system are many,

but the most significant is in targeting and response times.

Taking a human out of the loop means

it can react much quicker than a human being could

and it is very, very effective.

It doesn't get worried, it doesn't get consent,

it doesn't get tired.

If the systems work as we hope that they will someday work,

it is potentially more discriminate

and more proportional

than a human being.

With a Phalanx's auto Cannon effectively shreds

the inbound projectile.

The integration of the Phalanx's control system

with a commercial grade laser

could lead to a different future

for air defense weaponry.

To the untrained eye, it looks like a telescope

and the operators sitting behind a screen

look as though they're playing a video game,

but this is no game.

Lasers are atlast entering military service

and warfare will never be the same.

It is the Laser Weapon System or LaWS.

The first idea of lasers came from Einstein in 1913.

Einstein predicted that we could generate light,

not with multiple frequencies like in a lamp,

but with a single frequency.

And we go toward the light

so it could go in the same direction.

In theory, laser weapons target an object

with a train of brief pulses of high intensity light energy.

The heat generated causes rapid evaporation

and expansion of the surface,

creating shock waves that damage the object.

It's taken over 50 years to make them

practical battlefield weapons,

overcoming numerous technological hurdles along the way.

The biggest being the conversion of energy

into the actual beam emitted.

Early lasers could only convert 10%

of the total power input into light energy,

which meant that to create an effective laser weapon,

a huge power source was required.

Using the latest technology and optics,

LaWS projects an infrared beam from a solid state array

that converts 50% of available energy.

And when it's beam is tuned to high output,

it can affect the structural integrity of aircraft,

burn holes in the hulls of small boats,

heat artillery shells in midair,

causing them to explode or heat storage containers

at a fuel dump until the fuel ignites.

And test aboard the USS Ponce in 2014

have proved it works.

Among the advantages of a laser

compared to a projectile weapon

is that it requires no projectile.

There is no need to manufacture, transport

or store munitions.

It is solely relied on a power source,

which makes each shot virtually cost free.

It's much cheaper than a missile

for example, if you fire a missile it may cost $100,000

or $1 million

and if a laser shot,

it can cost like $2 or $1.

Lasers may never totally replace other weapons

and International agreement means

they can't be used to target individual people,

still for targeting practically everything else.

The time of lasers is finally coming.

It's warfare at the speed of light.

We may well see near future wars

in which autonomous robot drone swarms

are attacking a target and being shot down by lasers.

It sounds like science fiction, but it's really happening.

Fighter aircraft have always captured

the public attention.

In world war I, dogfights between biplanes

sought to control the skies

so that just one side could see the battlefield

to direct their artillery.

But in World War II as the skies of Europe and Asia

filled with bombers targeting cities,

they took on a much more serious role.

Anti-aircraft weapons can only do so much

in defense of those on the ground.

And sometimes the only way to defend

is to take the fight to the skies.

On the 16th of July, 1940,

Adolf Hitler ordered the preparation

of operation Sea Lion,

a potential airborne and amphibious assault on Britain

that would come once the Luftwaffe

had established air superiority over the UK.

And so the famous battle of Britain began

and standing between the Luftwaffe

and victory were two aircraft,

one of which was Britain's first model plane fighter,

the Hawker Hurricane, an aircraft designed in the mid 1930s.

At the time the whole RAF was still flying by planes.

Around that time, the Messerschmitt 109 came into being,

single engine, stress skin, monoplane fighter,

heavily armed, quite fast

and the IRF said, well we done have anything to match it.

So they put forward a request to the British industry

and the Hawker Hurricane and the Supermarine Spitfire

were the initial results of that.

The Hawker hurricane was in many ways,

a transitional aircraft constructed using

a mix of old and new techniques.

A steel tube fuselage was bolted together,

over which were fitted wooden stringers

that gave the aircraft its streamlined shape.

The wing structure was forged of Aluminium,

but unlike the Me-109,

which had a modern Aluminium stress skin,

the Hurricane was covered in fabric.

And that fabric skin would prove

to be one of the Hurricane's strength.

The Hurricane was easier to turn around than a Spitfire

particularly battle damage because more often than not,

you just throw a fabric patch over a bullet hole

and send it down again.

While the Hurricane was an impressive fighter,

it could not have won the battle of Britain alone.

The German Messerschmitt 109 was simply too fast.

Hurricanes supreme against incoming bombers,

needed to fight alongside an aircraft

that could match the capabilities of

their Messerschmitt escort.

That aircraft is perhaps the best remembered fighter

of World War II.

The Supermarine Spitfire.

Where the Hurricane had been something of a compromise

between old and new,

the Spitfire heralded an all new method

of building fighter aircraft.

It was an all-metal design with a monocoque frame,

an Aluminium alloy stress skin

covering the outer surfaces,

making the Spitfire incredibly light and streamlined,

contributing to its legendary maneuverability.

It also made it difficult at first to build

with the industry required to manufacture and work

metal airframes and the particular manufacturing issues

surrounding the famous elliptical wing.

A complicated design intended to reduce drag

and increase aerodynamic performance.

That wing proved revolutionary.

And along with the rolls Royce engines,

it gave the Spitfire astounding aerodynamic capability.

And perhaps more importantly,

speed.

The role of the Spitfire was to take on the fighters.

When the Germans sent across the Heinkel 111s

and junkers 88s, they were escorted by

Messerschmitt 109s and 110s,

it was the Spitfire's job to take on those two aircraft

to allow the Hurricanes into take out the bomber.

Technically, it had a slight edge

on the Messerschmitt,

but the contest was close run

and often came down to the skill of opposing pilots.

The Spitfire may be better remembered than the Hurricane.

The two aircraft worked very much together.

If they had the Hurricane backing up Spitfires

and Spitfires looking out for the Hurricanes,

the battle of Britain would have ended very differently.

When the Spitfire and the Messerschmitt

did battle in the skies above grip,

they were among the fastest aircraft of their time.

But as the war came to a close,

jet engines began to roar.

And within less than five years from the skies over Korea,

a new jet aircraft dominated.

The technologically advanced, MiG-15.

Developed in 1947 to intercept bombers,

the MiG-15 design drew on valuable lessons

learned from World War II.

The first thing acknowledged was that

it had to be fast enough to intercept targets

before they could enter friendly airspace.

To achieve this, the Russians copied and improved

on British rolls Royce jet engine sold to them

at the end of the war.

The power of the new jet technology

was then combined with a new wing design

to give it unrivaled speed.

Swept wing is a layout for a similar lift capability,

but less drag.

Instead of trying to push a plane

through the air horizontally

if you sweep it, it's easier to through the air.

This combination of two new ideas

made for astounding performance games over earlier aircraft.

The MiG streak through the sky

at close to 1100 kilometers per hour.

It's rate of climb was 3000 meters per minute,

almost twice as fast as the first-generations

straight wing jet fighters,

like the Gloster Meteors that were sent to combat.

And where the MiG also shown, was in armament.

Fortunately the plane was delivered

to the air force combat loaded

so armament test could be made.

The Russians had learned during world war II

that aircraft equipped with machine guns

simply couldn't inflict sufficient damage

to cripple large aircraft.

And so the MiG-15s were equipped with one 1.45 inch

and two nine inch canons.

As a result, when MiG-15s began modeling

B-29 Superfortresses,

the effect was as startling to the Americans

as it was devastating.

The US, which until the MiGS introduction,

had been able to bomb with impunity

was forced to abandon daylight rates

since their bomber escorts

straight-winged F-80 and F-84 fighters

were completely outclassed.

With UN air superiority on the brink of collapse

and the Korean peninsula at risk,

the United States deploy the only aircraft

which could hope to stop the MiG,

the untried

F-86 Sabre.

The MiG-15 though incredibly capable,

was a jet aircraft that had been built in a similar way

to aircraft from World War II.

Still very much a mechanical airplane in that

all of the control services

were operated by wires and pulleys

connected to the flight stick.

The F-86 Sabre by contrast was an all new aircraft design

that attempted to apply the very latest developments

in aerodynamics, avionics and jet engine technology

in a single package.

It was the first American airplane to have full powered

flight controls.

So the ailerons and elevators,

controlled hydraulically via electrical signals

and multitude of valves and switches

and it's a very complicated system,

but very advanced for its time.

The main role role of the Sabre was

to combat the MiG-15s and they were

fairly evenly matched depending on the altitude

the fight took place.

At lower altitudes, the MiG was more capable.

It was a more aerobatic airplane at low altitude.

Despite the Sabre's disadvantage

at low altitude,

the two aircraft proved to be fairly evenly matched

in performance.

The Sabre was slightly quicker,

and although it couldn't fly as high

or climb quite as quickly as its Soviet made opponent,

it could dive faster,

was more aerodynamic and stable,

and importantly,

it was fitted with the latest radar targeting system

that automatically acquired enemy aircraft

during high-speed dogfights.

A total of 224 Sabres were lost,

of which about 100 were the result of aerial combat,

but they destroyed 566 MiGs.

Although the disparity between the two was lessened

when the MiG was in the hands

of an experienced Russian pilot.

Regardless, and despite looking outwardly similar,

it was the technologically superior Sabres

which won the day.

And just as agile aircraft are built to

attack and defend bombers in the sky,

on the sea fast, high powered vessels

defend convoys and less mobile maritime assets.

Although these heavily armed protectors

aren't called fighters,

they're called destroyers.

At the beginning of the 20th century,

navies across the world had developed a fascination

with torpedoes,

which were considered the most feared weapons

in maritime warfare.

Every navy in the world had a fleet of torpedo boats

and the bigger navies had corresponding fleet of small,

fast torpedo boat destroyers.

In World War I, the war at sea

very quickly evolved in a way that hadn't been expected.

German submarines armed with torpedoes

posed a constant threat and a need arose

for fast well-armed vessels

to protect the fleet and merchant ships

from the menace.

Vessels that could operate in heavy seas.

In 1916, the British commissioned to design

for a much larger torpedo boat destroyer

that could fill the role

and lead the existing destroyer fleet.

The result was the V and W-class.

The principle characteristic of the early destroyer

was speed.

And the V and W-class were an evolution of those designs.

Long at 95 meters

and narrow with a beam of just nine meters.

Their compact hull design featured a higher freeboard

than previous,

which gave them much greater ability in heavy seas.

And with a top speed of 34 knots,

they were fast and heavily armed.

They introduced a number of features,

not the least of which was the

different arrangement of the guns.

Two guns forward, one superimposed above the other,

and two guns aft providing the familiar A and B and X and Y

target configuration,

which proved to be very, very successful.

Built between 1916 and 1924,

67 of the ships were completed.

Many going on to serve in World War II.

Became a style, pattern so to speak for

British destroyer design for the best part

of a quarter of a century.

But threats evolve

requiring defenses to do the same.

The World War I concept of a long line of destroyers

steaming at 30 knots heading towards the enemy battle fleet

with the torpedo tubes trained over the side

to fire torpedoes and sink the battleships is long gone.

That's 100 years ago.

That's a different style of warfare.

In fact the style of warfare has changed

to the point where today,

there are no battleships and very few battle cruisers

as the most destructive ships of the naval line

were once called.

Today that frontline role is undertaken by destroyers

and for the United States,

since the late 1980s,

that role has been fulfilled by one design,

the Arleigh Burke-class.

Just like the destroyers of old,

the Arleigh Burke are long at over 150 meters,

narrow have a shallow draft

and a top speed in excess of 30 knots.

But that is where the similarities end.

It is a ship which in many ways

is far more capable than a World War II cruiser.

It is able to strike land targets at some distance.

It can engage other ships.

It can engage aircraft.

It is able to control large areas of sea

but with modern fire control systems

and they're powerful warship.

Ships like the Arleigh Burke-class

are referred to as multi-mission destroyers,

taking on the role of both defender and attacker.

With Tomahawk cruise missiles for

attacks on land-based targets,

Harpoon anti-ship missiles,

acoustic homing torpedoes for anti-submarine duties,

a suite of short, medium and long range missiles

designed to intercept enemy ballistic missiles

at any stage of their trajectory

and the latest surface to wear weapons,

the Arleigh Burke-class is an incredibly

capable weapons platform.

With a level of firepower,

the crews of the V and W-class destroyer

would have found unimaginable.

But the capacity to attack is nothing

without the ability to defend.

The Arleigh Burkes incorporate elements

of stealth design in the angled hull

and the tripod main mast,

which make them more difficult to detect

by anti-ship missiles.

This is combined with the latest

air and missile defense systems

that can detect a golf ball size target

as far out as 166 kilometers,

giving it ample time to engage countermeasures.

Should something get through,

a suite of close in weapons

including the Phalanx CIWS stand guard on deck

and an air filtration system makes the Arleigh Burkes

the first US warships designed to endure

in the event of a nuclear, biological or chemical war.

If the Arleigh Burke-class is the ultimate expression

of the old adage, "The best form of defense is attack,"

then land-based defensive structures

would represent the directly opposing view.

One that implies that

"The best form of defense is attrition."

With the weaponry of the 20th century

evolving at a rate that in many ways outpaced tactics

and with mechanization increasing the speed

of battlefield advances in World War II,

nations turned to the age old strategy

of permanent or temporary structures

designed to slow an enemy and defend positions.

Structures that in World War I

had resulted in utter carnage.

The last line of German defense in World War I

was a 160 kilometer stretch of

concrete bunkers and pillboxes

in front of which stretch tracks of barbed wire

that were at times 91 meters deep.

It was called the Hindenburg Line

Under intense pressure, the Hindenburg Line had failed,

but it had provided enough resistance

to encourage the French

alarmed at the possibility of renewed German aggression

to build their own defensive wall in 1930.

The Maginot Line.

Obviously the French knew especially

from World War I that you need a defensive position,

a defensive posture, so

the Maginot Line was a series of

interconnecting pillboxes.

You had tank ditches, you had physical obstacles

in the way to try and deter somebody from coming through.

The Maginot Line was not

a single continuous structure,

instead it was composed of over 500 separate buildings.

Each arranged according to a detailed plan.

The key units were 50 large forts or ouvrage,

which were located within 14 kilometers of each other,

along the borders with Germany and Italy.

These forts were often connected

using reinforced underground tunnels

and were placed near enough to each other

to provide interlocking fields of fire.

The surface areas of these vast spaces

were protected by steel reinforced concrete,

which was up to three and a half meters thick.

A depth capable of withstanding multiple direct hits

from the largest artillery.

They were fitted with steel turrets,

domes that nestled on the ground when under attack

and elevated for firing.

In theory, the Maginot Line

was capable of creating a massive continuous line of fire

that should have devastated any attack.

However, it had one major failure.

It was not mobile

and warfare had changed.

Mobility had caught up with firepower

and when in May, 1940,

the German army attacked through Belgium

as it had in World War I

and crossed the supposedly impenetrable forests

in the Ardennes,

the closest to thousands of French soldiers

manning the Maginot Line came to see in action

was watching unchallenged waves of German bombers

flying over it.

In 1942, there was only one way to attack Europe unmask

and that was by sea.

And with Germany in almost total control of the continent,

Hitler decided to keep it that way.

With a workforce of close to a million,

the Germans began construction

on what would be the largest

network of fortresses built in the 20th century,

the Atlantic Wall.

A formidable collection of an estimated

15,000 reinforced concrete bunkers

stretching across the Belgian and French

coasts from the Norwegian to the Spanish border.

The Atlantic wall consumed more than a million tons of steel

and 17 million cubic meters of concrete.

In all there were 70 batteries

along the Danish Coastline.

With 293 large caliber guns,

225 batteries in Norway with over 1000

and 343 batteries along the French coast,

which included 1,348 heavy weapons

and an assortment of anti-tank and anti-aircraft positions,

machine gun posts, munition storage areas and bunkers

housing supplies and power generation equipment.

The Atlantic wall was the first line of fortress Europa

as Hitler called it,

and the 630 kilometer west wall,

or as it was better known the Siegfried Line,

the last.

Built between 1938 and 1940,

the Siegfried Line incorporated more than 18,000 bunkers,

pillboxes and tunnels,

stretching along the French border

from the Netherlands to Switzerland.

Designed to slow and offensive while reserves are brought up

the Germans knew the speed of tanks

pose the greatest threat.

And so a vast network of tank traps

were central to the line's design.

So generally you've gotta have a

trench that's wide enough to trap the tanks

where they are so they can't break through.

Then you've got tetrahedron, so big concrete triangles.

So tanks can't climb over them basically.

'Cause if they do, they get stuck on the point and

lose traction.

And like the barbed wire of World War I

that was often laid to funnel troops to their death,

the tank traps were designed to lure tanks

to their destruction.

But defensive walls can be breached with enough concentrated

manpower in one location.

And once breached, they can be moved.

The Atlantic wall was pierced when 156,000 allied troops

landed on the beaches of Normandy

and thousands of ships and aircraft threw their might

and to generalize on Howard's great crusade.

It marked the beginning of the end of fortress Europa

and like the barbed wire of World War I,

the Hindenburg Line and the Atlantic Wall before it,

the Siegfried Line offered some respite

to retreating German troops,

but eventually buckled under the weight

of the allied advance.

Like its predecessors,

it fell victim to the mobility of modern warfare

and was overrun in early 1945.

And with it,

the third Reich fell.

If the enduring image of the first world war

is a misery of wire and mud,

it was partly made so by a revolution in armaments.

Trenches and barbed wire will slow in advance,

but waves of men can only be completely stopped

by firepower.

Here in Maxim was a man of great curiosity,

an inventor of a diverse range of items.

One of his creations would make him a wealthy man

and change the course of history.

The story goes that Maxim was talking with a friend

in Europe who told him to forget

his chemistry and electricity.

If you wanna make a pile of money,

invent something that will enable these Europeans

to cut each other's throats with greater facility.

And then he had a chance to experience.

So the story went that Maxim fired

the M1903 Springfield rifle and was struck literally

by the recoil.

And it occurred to him that

he could harness that power.

Maxim designed a system

that took the force of the guns

recoil to operate it automatically

by simply using the explosive energy from the firing

of a projectile that would otherwise go into

a rifleman shoulder and have it drive

the working parts backwards.

Maxim conceived the idea of what we now know to be

the machine gun.

Later Maxim's company was bought by the Vickers company,

which was a major British armaments company,

because it makes some modifications to the design

to make it more efficient

and in 1912 produced what we know

as the biggest machine gun.

What they produced was a weapon

that could continuously fire

an extraordinary 450 rounds per minute,

but that rapid firing generated extreme levels of heat.

One of the really distinctive features

of the Maxim series of guns,

others as well is the big blocky barrel section

if you like.

Well, the barrel is actually very slit

and the barrel sits inside.

What is actually a water jacket.

The jacket around the main barrel

contain 3.7 liters of water

that had to be kept up to the weapon

to ensure that it didn't overheat.

In the stalemate that wants the Western front

it was the perfect defensive weapon.

Where you've got a fixed machine gun

and you're able to dominate the landscape in front of you.

The classic movie image of swinging back and forth

this weapon, utterly devastating.

The devil's paintbrush is one of the nicknames

for the Maxim's gun later on.

The Vickers machine gun

was such an efficient design.

It remained in service in some fashion until the 1960s.

With the need for a constant water supply

meant it took as many as six men to operate it.

With increasingly mobile attacking forces

unreinforced static defense placements

quickly became tactically obsolete.

Modern warfare demanded defensive mobility

to meet an attacker anywhere on fronts of increasing scope.

The Vickers with its water cooling system

simply couldn't keep pace.

When hero Maxim invented his automatic machine gun,

it replaced another weapon that had gained only modest favor

amongst the militaries of the late 1800s.

The Gatling gun.

This is not a machine gun as we would describe it today,

but we would call it a manually operated machine gun,

with a rotating cluster of barrels

and some sort of feed device for

the ammunition sitting on the top.

It's a machine, an engine that fires more than one shot,

in this case by turning a crank.

Gatlings 1862 invention had failed

to capture the hearts of the army in its day

but when modern electronics and hydraulics were applied

to replace the manual crank handle,

and it was given modern armor piercing rounds

it became the ultimate expression of the original.

A seven barrel machine gun of devastating power.

Like so many modern weapons,

the GAU-8 was designed in 1970 with a particular cold war

what if scenario in mind.

In this case it was, what if the Soviet tank forces

just happened to come over the horizon?

The Americans decided they would need a fast,

highly mobile anti-tank weapon

to defend against the possibility.

And when the GAU-8 was found to be effective

against heavy armor,

it was given its own high-speed delivery mechanism,

the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II,

commonly referred to as the warthog.

These things would scream in overhead

and just destroy the armor,

limiting the need to engage them tank to tank

or to use anti-tank weapons, infantry tank weapons.

In practice of course the cold war did not go hot.

As an anti-tank tool, it kinda fell by the wayside.

And the GAU-8 along with the Warthog,

might've passed into the footnotes of history,

like the Gatling gun, had it not been for the Gulf war,

where it was used against Iraqi armor

with devastating effect.

Very quickly it was realized

it could be an immensely capable

close air support platform.

Not only will it penetrate tremendous amounts of armor

or cover or anything you put in front of it,

the energy being put forth by this is just so tremendous.

The Avenger has an astronomical

maximum firing rate of up to 4,200 rounds per minute.

That's roughly 70 rounds a second

and it's armor-piercing rounds are lethal.

So it's projecting these huge

30 millimeter in diameter shells

which are about yea long

and contain an immense amount of explosive potential.

Everyone has been in service anywhere near it

loves the thing and anyone who's faced it

I imagine has feared it.

The GAU-8 Avenger is the pinnacle

in the development of the machine gun,

a line drawn from the defensive trench in placements

of World War I

to close air support actions

and like all machines of war,

they continue to adapt and evolve.

The most fragile piece of equipment on any battlefield

is the soldier.

And for centuries, militaries have sought ways

of protecting that asset.

Body armor is nothing new.

We are all familiar with the suits of armor

worn by the Knights of the middle ages.

In the 20th century,

the idea of offering protection to the enlisted man

began with the issuing of simple steel helmets

in World War I,

but there's only so much you can get under a steel helmet.

In World War II,

air war resulted in huge losses of air crew

who were quite literally sitting ducks

for anti-aircraft fire.

From a growing need to defend the undefended

came the Genesis of what we now call, the Bulletproof vest.

There was something called a flack jacket,

and that was kind of the original name for a

Bulletproof vest.

Air crew used to wear these nylon vest,

which had these little two inch steel plates,

which were into woven

and they would provide protection as the name implies

from the flack, from the fragments

from anti-aircraft munitions.

But they were bulky and extremely heavy,

a problem solved in the early 70s

with the discovery of Cavilon.

A lightweight polymer five times stronger

by weight than steel.

Over time, ballistic protection that

was being offered to troops was getting better and better

and at the same time,

the burden to troops was becoming less.

So the vests themselves were getting lighter.

More protection, less weight.

And as that evolution has continued,

the Bulletproof vest has been renamed.

The Improved Outer Tactical Vest or IOTV

is the very latest in troop protection.

A medium-sized IOTV weighs 1.6 kilograms

down from 10 kilograms for a World War II flack jacket.

Fully equipped, it has soft armor panel inserts,

four Silicon carbide ballistic plate inserts,

front side, and rear and collar and growing protectors.

It is also designed with quick release

and medical access features.

If the soldier gets into very difficult spot

like underwater,

then the individual can very quickly

release the armor packs,

and that gives them more mobility.

Mobile, light and strong,

a fully equipped modern vest can withstand

a 30-06 Springfield M2 armor piercing round at normal range.

But body armor is designed for a very specific task,

disposing of bombs and the increasing use of IEDs

calls for protection that is quite different

from taking an impact from a bullet.

Most people wearing bulletproof vests in combat

will probably be shot at from some distance

with a projectile optimized in shape to penetrate materials,

a known threat.

This is not the case for individuals attempting to disarm

an improvised explosive device, a landmine,

or an unexploded warhead.

Up close and personal,

the soldier will potentially be exposed to fragments

traveling at incredibly high velocity.

Possibly even 12,000 to 15,000 meters per second,

as they're accelerated by the explosion.

But that threat can be countered

by the advanced bomb suit.

With a bomb suit, you've got to deal with

a much more intense threat,

is of paramount importance to use thick materials

that are able to deal with the loading

that you get from an explosive blast.

In the aftermath of the London blitz

bomb disposal teams worked largely unprotected

when neutralizing unexploded ordinance.

In the decade since, suits have evolved

to become sophisticated pieces of military equipment.

Designed to withstand extreme force

while allowing the wearer clear vision and mobility.

Bomb suit is generally made from multiple materials.

So we would use high strength steels or ceramics

to deal with the fragments that you would get

from an exploding munition or exploding IED.

And we use high-performance fibers such as Kevlar,

and we use heat resistant fibers as well.

So fibers that are able to deal with the heat

of an explosion.

All of these materials combined

can offer protection from the shrapnel of the explosion,

but it does little to defend against the shock of the blast.

So we use foam and what the foam does,

it mitigates the shock that you get from the explosive blast

as it transmits from the bomb suit to the human body.

And that increases the level of survivability

for the occupant.

Every battle is an armour wrestle,

an examination conducted by an attack on a defense.

And the history of war is the story of the evolution

and adaptation of offensive and defensive tactics

and the machines used to fight them.

The IED has changed the nature of warfare

and tactics and equipment have evolved to defend against it

just as they have in every aspect of warfare

and they will continue to do so.

(upbeat music)