After the end of the Civil War, the Army used a 10-barrel Gatling gun that could fire 400 rounds per minute during various conflicts with the Native American population in what are now the Western states. The Maxim machine-gun eventually replaced the Gatling gun, but the crude hand-driven weapon heralded what was to come. During the brutal trench warfare of World War I, untold thousands fell to machine gun fire. The United States is the most formidable military power the world has ever seen. Arguably, since the end of the Cold War, America has enjoyed a level of dominance unparalleled in history—neither Rome nor the British Empire enjoyed such a level of superiority over rival powers. While the American military is not the largest on Earth, it is by far the best-trained and best-equipped force on the planet—putting rivals like Russia and China to shame. But it took generations to develop America’s military into the world-beating force it is today, and it wasn’t until the end of the...
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