Finnegan, Terrence J. Shooting The Front Eastern Operations. Volume 2: Russfront! Aerial Reconnaissance over mobile Battlefields

Instruments of war shape the battlefield. Today, drones are revolutionizing the way armies wage war. Aircraft entered the fray in 19141915; initially providing only basic observations, they gradually evolved into tools for detailed situational assessments regarding enemy positions and combat strength along specific sectors of the front. On the Western Front, the conflict quickly stagnated into trench warfare, with the front line remaining largely static until 1918. The situation on the Eastern Front was vastly different: the expansive territories of Russia, the Polish salient, Galicia, and Germany became the theater for mobile operations in which armies clashed and suffered catastrophic losses. Over the course of these campaigns, aviation advanced significantly through the introduction of more capable aircraft, improvements in aerial cameras, and the development of signals intelligence techniques. The interplay of these key elementswhich today form the foundation of military reconnaissanceillustrates the potential of aviation in the First World War better than any other factor. This book chronicles that evolution in greater detail than any previous work. It addresses a subject of immense importance to anyone interested in the nature of warfare and the defining characteristics of military structurespast, present, and future.