military equipment and tactics then?  It's hard to just talk about a weapon without talking about how it is used.  

A three-level abstraction is required here.  We have the history and strategy which are inseparable, and should be discussed in articles on each war or conflict.  That's the most abstract.  Then we need the least abstract military equipment and tactics level, with articles like military technology during the Napoleonic wars and so forth, to make it clear how conflicts were conducted using this stuff - this should focus on the actual tactical combat engagements, how they affected outcomes, etc..

And, for those wars that resulted in a great deal of change to military technology, either because they were very long (like the Hundred Years' War) or very intense (like WWI or WWII), we should discuss technological escalation as a separate topic, more abstract than the equipment and tactics, less abstract than history and strategy.  See technological escalation during WWI for an example - this can be done for WWII, US Civil War, Napeolonic wars, at least, as well, and maybe also for the Cold War.  This gets into the mechanics of how things changed, how they thought, etc., and really isn't the same topic as either history/strategy or equipment/tactics for the guys on the ground using  the equipment to perform the tactics.