Military revolutions are major discontinuities in military affairs.
They render obsolete or subordinate existing means for conducting war. The modern period in general and the past two centuries in particular have witnessed the greatest rate of change. Since the early fifteenth century, the conduct of war has been radically altered eight times. Six of these transformations have occurred within the past 200 years alone. During the last decade of the eighteenth century, a social and political revolution in France transformed war.