History RockBeatsLaser / RealLife

* Humans are better able to defeat more "complex" critters than "simple" organisms or even are-they-even-organisms. Most animals big enough to be punched in the face can be taken out with a BaldeOnAStick or if need be with firearms. Mosquitoes are already a bit more difficult as they have both stealth and numbers. Bacteria get harder still, as they cannot be ''seen'' by the naked eye, but at least there are [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic Antibiotics]] which attack the structure and/or metabolism of those tiny bastards. But what do you do against something that doesn't ''have'' the structures an antibiotic could act against? Or, for that matter, a metabolism? [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus Viruses]] are notoriously hard to "kill" because the question of whether they are "alive" to begin with could just as well be answered "no". And don't even get started on [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion Prions]] which are a further degree of NightmareFuel than even viruses.

* Humans are better able to defeat more "complex" critters than "simple" organisms or even are-they-even-organisms. Most animals big enough to be punched in the face can be taken out with a PointyStick or if need be with firearms. Mosquitoes are already a bit more difficult as they have both stealth and numbers. Bacteria get harder still, as they cannot be ''seen'' by the naked eye, but at least there are [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antibiotic Antibiotics]] which attack the structure and/or metabolism of those tiny bastards. But what do you do against something that doesn't ''have'' the structures an antibiotic could act against? Or, for that matter, a metabolism? [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus Viruses]] are notoriously hard to "kill" because the question of whether they are "alive" to begin with could just as well be answered "no". And don't even get started on [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion Prions]] which are a further degree of NightmareFuel than even viruses.

* During the [[UsefulNotes/WarsOfItalianIndependence Third War of Italian Independence]] (the southernmost front of the UsefulNotes/AustroPrussianWar), the Italian fleet was trounced by the Austrian one at Lissa. While this was mostly caused by divisions in the Italian hierarchy, poor organization, and the general incompetence of the admirals, during the fight the extremely modern ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_ironclad_Affondatore Affondatore]]'' (the only ship in either fleet with turret-mounted guns) suffered heavy damage from the engaged ''Kaiser'', a ''wooden sail-propelled ship of the line'' (which was also badly damaged but still came out in a better state).

* Played with during the US war in Afghanistan. In 2001, US Special Forces that were inserted in the country to assist anti-Taliban tribes were forced to learn how to fight on horseback, as this was the tribesmen's primary method of transportation. While it is true that cavalry charges were on occasion somewhat successful against Taliban mechanized units, what is often not mentioned in the rock beats laser narrative is that ''smart bombs'' and other aerial support were called in by the US special forces ahead of the charges and were essential to their success -- without air support, [[RealityEnsues the horses would be easily driven off by enemy armor.]]

** Jamestown settlers seem to have taken this tip. After an attack by Pamunkey Indians left over 300 Jamestown settlers dead in 1622, the Virginia Company asked for specific military equipment from England. King James I agreed and sent various weapons and armor from the Tower of London to Virginia. Many of these were medieval or Renaissance-era weapons and armor (like bills, bows and arrows, calivers, brigandines, jacks of plate, mail shirts, and iron skulls). While these had become obsolete in Europe in the face of massed gun-toting soldiers in rank and file, they were well suited to fighting the Native Americans of Virginia in relatively short-ranged skirmishes, while still retaining or adapting some European military methods (there were still fears that the Spanish might attack) that worked in the context of Virginia.

** Jamestown settlers seem to have taken this tip. After an attack by Pamunkey Indians left over 300 Jamestown settlers dead in 1622, the Virginia Company asked for specific military equipment from England. King James I agreed and sent various weapons and armor from the Tower of London to Virginia. Many of these were medieval or Renaissance-era weapons and armor (like bills, bows and arrows, brigandines, jacks of plate, mail shirts, and iron skulls). While these had become obsolete in Europe in the face of massed gun-toting soldiers in rank and file, they were well suited to fighting the Native Americans of Virginia in relatively short-ranged skirmishes.

** Jamestown settlers seem to have taken this tip. After an attack by Pamunkey Indians left over 300 Jamestown settlers dead in 1622, the Virginia Company asked for specific military equipment from England. King James I agreed and sent various weapons and armor from the Tower of London to Virginia. Many of these were medieval or Renaissance-era weapons and armor (like bills, bows and arrows, brigandines, jacks of plate, mail shirts, and iron skulls). While these had become obsolete in the fact of massed gun-toting European soldiers in rank and file, they were well suited to fighting the Native Americans of Virginia in relatively short-ranged skirmishes.

** Jamestown settlers seem to have taken this tip. After an attack by Pamunkey Indians left over 300 Jamestown settlers dead in 1622, the Virginia Company asked for specific military equipment from England. King James I agreed and sent various weapons and armor from the Tower of London to Virginia. Many of these were medieval or Renaissance-era weapons and armor (like bills, bows and arrows, brigandines, jacks of plate, mail shirts, and iron skulls). Though deemed unfit for use against massed gun-toting European soldiers in rank and file, they were well suited to fighting the Native Americans of Virginia in relatively short-ranged skirmishes.

** Jamestown settlers seem to have taken this tip. After an attack by Pamunkey Indians left over 300 Jamestown settlers dead in 1622, the Virginia Company asked for military equipment from England. King James I agreed and sent various weapons and armor from the Tower of London to Virginia. Many of these were medieval or Renaissance-era weapons and armor (like bills, bows and arrows, brigandines, jacks of plate, mail shirts, and iron skulls). Though deemed unfit for use against massed gun-toting European soldiers in rank and file, they were well suited to fighting the Native Americans of Virginia in relatively short-ranged skirmishes.

* Similar to the above , during the breakup of Yugoslavia, the crossbow manufacturer Barnett sold crossbows to Serbian paramilitaries due to crossbows not being banned under the UN arms embargo. The Paramilitaries and even some army units used the crossbows as virtually silent sniper weapons. The crossbows also had a terrifying effect on the soldiers who came under attack from them, as the crossbows were so quiet they never knew they were being attacked. During the mentioned breakup of Yugoslavia, one of the main weapons of the rebelling side, with less than half the men, all the siege and air war machines moved to Serbia, were sinks and heating boilers carried and dropped by firefighting aircraft with over 80 year outdated engines.

** During the Falklands conflict, there was a lot of fear in the Royal Navy that Argentina's American built WWII-era cruiser, ''Gerneral Belgrano''[[note]]Known in her former life in US service as the ''USS Phoenix''[[/note]] could pull something similar in combat. The Royal Navy simply didn't have missiles with enough penetration to defeat the cruiser's armor, and didn't have ships with enough armor to withstand the cruiser's guns are added missiles. Fortunately for the Royal Navy, they had some rocks of their own, and sank the Belgrano with a WWII era torpedo (fired from a nuclear sub).

* During the [[UsefulNotes/WarsOfItalianIndependence Third War of Italian Independence]] (the southernmost front of the UsefulNotes/AustroPrussianWar), the Italian fleet was trounced by the Austrian one at Lissa. While this was mostly caused by divisions in the Italian hierarchy, poor organization, and the general incompetence of the admirals, during the fight the extremely modern ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_ironclad_Affondatore Affondatore]]'' (the only ship in either fleet with turret-mounted guns) suffered heavy damage from the engaged the ''Kaiser'', a ''wooden sail-propelled ship of the line'' (who was also badly damaged but still came out in a better state).

* The reason that the US Navy held onto the ''Iowa'' class battleships for so long wasn't because they were invincible, but because it forced the Soviet Union to invest in weapons that could counter them. The sinking the Italian battleship ''Roma'' proved the guided armor piercing missiles were an effective counter to battleships and the pacific proved appropriately armed aircraft could do the same. So everyone phased out battleships and as a consequence, everyone phased out anti-battleship weapons. So America just dusted its own battleships off, strapped missiles on them, and showed them off to a world that had no counter to battleships.

** During the Philippine-American War, Filipino fighters (largely armed with swords and machetes) resisted gunfire from the newly-introduced .38 Colt revolver by wrapping ropes around their bodies, which helped staunch bleeding and may have even ''deflected'' bullets. Even after taking direct hits, the natives were still in fine condition to rip apart their colonizers. Many no doubt died of blood loss later, but that didn't do the American soldiers they'd hacked up in the meantime any good. This forced the U.S. to bring the recently retired .45 Colt revolvers back into service, as a stop-gap until newer firearms and ammunition could be introduced. This led directly to the [[LongRunners M1911 .45 semi-automatic pistol]] and the .45 ACP cartridge, to give both more shots and greater stopping power than the older revolvers.

* A note on military technology: New equipment is often designed to outperform or counter what is ''currently'' common, with effectiveness against even older technology being taken for granted as the current standard is always supposed to have superseded everything before it. Even if this assumption is not present, compromises have to be made during the design process and it is simply more logical to balance performance against the threats of today (which an army is almost certain to face on the battlefield) than those of a decade ago (which are likely to have been phased out altogether). As a simple example, medieval plate armour was designed to be effective against swords and spears, where the shape of the metal would cause the sharp edges/points to be deflected to the side rather than penetrate the armour; however, a sufficiently heavy club swung at a helmeted head can knock out or even outright kill its wearer. Similarly, modern bulletproof vests are designed to stop bullets by absorbing and spreading their kinetic energy over a larger area; however, a knife (or pretty much anything with a sharp point/edges) could force its way through by continual application of force. In any case, armed forces tend to hold on to old equipment for a long time due to the sizable investment, so if someone is beating your lasers with rocks, you ''should'' still have some rocks of your own to send right back.

** In fact, the Vietnamese employed tactics similar to those used by Le Loi's men in the Vietnamese rebellion against Ming Dynasty China in ''the 15th century''. Politics aside, the main reason why the Vietnamese prevailed was because dense jungle nullified many of the advantages possessed by outside invaders, whether it was in armoured horsemen or main battle tanks. As for the United States, its performance during the war provided a textbook case of how supposedly superior military equipment cannot ensure military superiority in local conditions, even if it worked as intended.

** Improvised man-traps in general can be extremely effective in dense vegetation of all kinds, despite most designs being indistinguishable from what Stone Age hunters would've employed. One of the nastier tricks employed by Vietnamese guerillas involved a literal application of BambooTechnology: pungi sticks. These were fresh bamboo shoots, cut to a point, hardened by fire, and used in several different types of traps, from swinging logs to pitfalls. If getting impaled didn't kill the victims, it would certainly take them out of action. Most notoriously, they were often covered in feces, which meant that any wound had a greater risk of becoming badly infected. To further add insult to injury, Viet Cong insurgents reportedly neutralized American M18 Claymore mines by ''urinating on them''.
** On the other side of the Vietnam war, the US used older cluster bombs because their submunitions had much greater chances at failing to fire on the initial drop and becoming deadly unexploded ordinance. As it turned out, having a bunch of unexploded bombs on the ground was much more damaging to the Vietnamese than having a whole area blown away in one go. In fact one the United States's most lethal cluster bomb munitions was known as the Lazy Dog, and it was essentially a lump of steel shaped like a blunt-nosed dart. Simply using gravity, these things would build up the inertia of a fifty caliber round during their decent. Each one cost just pennies to make and thousands could be deployed by a single airplane. Additionally, Lazy Dogs could be deployed from any kind of aircraft imaginable, including C-130s, which would fake a mid-flight cargo ejection to lure NVA/Vietcong troops out in the open before spraying the area with them.

* During the NATO operations in the former Yugoslavia, two [[RealLife/CoolPlane F-117 stealth aircraft]] were lost (one was shot down; one was hit and managed to return to base, but never flew again). This was due to, among other things, old radar sets that operated on a wavelength that the aircraft weren't so stealthy against, combined with prodigious application of [[MoreDakka anti-aircraft cannons]] and [[MacrossMissileMassacre SAM spam]]. Notably the same battery scored both. Partly attributed to carelessness on NATO's part, who flew the F-117s on the exact same flight path for every mission. It is worth noting that the conventional F-16s flew over three times as many sorties, with the exact same number of losses. Basically, the loss rate for the F-16 was roughly ''seven times less'' than that of the F-117.

* The A-10 Thunderbolt II. Built according to design principles set out by World War II ground-attack aircraft, it was not very aerodynamic, had low-power engines designed for subsonic efficiency rather than performance, and originally had a bare minimum of electronic navigation and targeting equipment required to fly. It is also ridiculously durable, armed with the GAU-8 Avenger, a gatling gun ''the size of a VW Beetle'' that can punch through the top of a tank with superb accuracy. As it turned out, the emphasis on subsonic efficiency meant that the "Warthog" could loiter around combat zones for long periods of time and made it a very stable platform for carrying large amounts of ordinance and unleashing it upon its targets. There are few combat aircraft in the world that can claim to withstand more punishment, or to have successfully carried out more ground missions under fire, with significantly higher mission availability and fewer friendly fire incidents to boot.
* The ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_battleship_Bismarck Bismarck]]'' was attacked by a small squadron of the obsolete [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Swordfish Fairey Swordfish biplane]], outdated and primitive even before the war started -- though not [[JustPlaneWrong as is occasionally assumed a World War I design]], having been designed in the 1930s (the Swordfish was simply obsolete before it was even designed). The planes crippled the battleship by taking out her rudder with a torpedo hit, leaving her unable to do anything but run in circles until the rest of the Royal Navy caught up. The ''Bismarck'' couldn't track and hit the slow-moving, low-flying biplanes since she had been designed with medium-velocity C33 105mm anti-aircraft guns but these had been substituted while under construction for the more modern high-velocity C37 105mm. Nobody told the fire control designers about the change and the fire control system was still optimized for the C33. As a result, the fire control system unerringly pointed the guns at the wrong place and overshot the planes. By some incredible chance five Swordfish were damaged but none shot down. Important to note the hit on the rudder (which was blind luck, ordnance from planes at the time couldn't really be aimed reliably) was the only hit by the planes that actually did any damage to the Bismarck. Outside of that, this trope was not TruthInTelevision as the planes' out-of-date torpedoes were too weak to inflict damage to anything besides the rudder.
* Shaped charge munitions can be easily made far less effective or nullified completely simply by putting up a relatively solid obstacle in their path to detonate the warhead before it reaches the target. As it turns out, forcing the resulting explosive jet to travel two feet through open space will protect a vehicle far better than 6 inches of steel armour.

* There's a gif floating around of an Early Middle Ages re-enactor at a Russian faire taking out a drone with a spear. He didn't think it all the way through, and was surprised when he actually hit the thing. Everyone was in good spirits about it and made a rune stone depicting the spear thrower killing the drone monster.

* There's a gif floating around of an Early Middle Ages at a Russian faire taking out a drone with a spear. He didn't think it all the way through and was surprised when he actually hit the thing. Everyone was in good spirits about it and made a rune stone of the spear thrower killing the drone monster.

* UsefulNotes/{{Can|ucksWithChinooks}}adian and [[UsefulNotes/AussiesWithArtillery Australian]] submarines built in the 1960s routinely "sink" modern American carriers in wargames. The standard tactic was to try and get ahead of the carrier battlegroup, and then go absolutely silent and unmoving and let the fleet run over them. Inevitably the subs were "sunk" when they executed an attack on the carrier, but more often than not they'd have gotten their torpedoes off first, trading a few dozen men and a dinky little diesel-electric boat for a multi-billion dollar fleet carrier crewed by thousands and carrying dozens of planes. Mind, awareness of the threat posed by diesel-electric subs is the whole reason they get invited to these wargames.

** Slightly Inverted when it came to small arms. In the beginning of the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong and NVA were armed with the AK-47 assault rifle (which was dismissed by the American higher-ups as cheap and ineffective), while the Americans were initially armed with the M14 rifle. The M14, while outranging the AK-47, weighed nearly 9 pounds and was just over 3 feet long. It's CripplingOverspecialization meant that American troops could only carry limited ammo and were left vulnerable against the lighter and more maneuverable AK, which was perfectly suited to the short-range fighting of the Vietnam jungle (negating the one advantage the M14 had). The US would respond by rushing the M16 into combat, only to find the M16 unable to stand up to the humidity of Vietnam and prone to failure, compared to the almost legendary reliability of the AK. The M16 was eventually improved with the introduction of the [=M16A1=]. But those early issues still plague the gun's reputation to this day, despite its design becoming a world-class battle rifle in subsequent M16 variants and the [=M4=] carbine family, with the [=M4A1=] carbine having replaced most [=M16A2s=] in US Army service.

* The US Navy's air division spends incredible amounts of time on "FOD" control -- that is, Foreign Object Damage control, making sure there's not so much as a pebble or an earring where it could, possibly, by any chance be thrown into the engine of a jet. It is amazing how a tiny object can utterly destroy a sufficiently advanced bit of equipment. That's why the first thing done at beginning of each day of duty on a carrier is a line of personnel walking together the length of the flight deck in strict formation to remove any piece of debris before any air traffic happens.

** Its also relatively difficult for fighter aircraft to shoot down as it can move so slowly that fighter launched missiles won't be able to effectively target it.

* There's a gif floating around of an Early Middle Ages at a Russian faire taking out a drone with a spear. He didn't think it all the way through and was suprised when he actually hit the thing. Everyone was in good spirits about it and made a rune stone of the spear thrower killing the drone monster.

* With the advent of GPS, many modern militaries have become increasingly reliant on it or similar systems as a navigation aid or to guide their weapons. However, there are a number of high tech counters to GPS that involve jamming or spoofing the signal, or just outright shooting down the GPS satellites. To get around these high tech GPS counters, the US is reviving an old Cold War era technnology: astro navigation. It was essentially a mechanical computer that tracked the user's position in relation to the stars that was installed in ballistic missiles and high flying aircraft like the SR-71 Blackbird and B2 Spirit. And today, astro-nav is greatly benefited by advances in miniaturization and digitization. Since astro-nav is a completely self contained system that does not require a connection to an external source, it is completely unaffected by anything that would counter GPS.

** During the Falklands conflict, there was a lot of fear in the Royal Navy that Argentina's American built WWII-era cruiser, ''Gerneral Belgrano''[[note]]Known in her former life in US service as the ''USS Phoenix''[[/note]] could pull something similar in combat. The Royal Navy simply didn't have missiles with enough penetration to defeat the cruisers armor, and didn't have ships with enough armor to withstand the cruiser's guns are added missiles. Fortunately for the Royal Navy, they had some rocks of their own, and sank the Belgrano with a WWII era torpedo (fired from a nuclear sub).

** American frontiersmen in the early 19th Century found themselves a similar situation as Australian colonists, before the revolver and repeating rifle were invented. The average American frontiersman, on a good day, would need about twenty seconds to reload his single-shot breech-loading musket. Twenty seconds was all a Lakota on horseback with a quiver full of arrows needed to make a pincushion.

* Subverted by the Battle of Adwa, the decisive battle of the first Italo-Ethiopian War. While the Ethiopians did have a number of soldiers still wielding antiquated weapons like swords and spears, their Emperor Menelik II was a MagnificentBastard who'd acquired a large arsenal of modern weapons through diplomacy with Italy's European rivals Russia and France. It's been argued that the Ethiopians were actually ''better'' equipped than the Italians, who were trying to [[YouGetWhatYouPayFor use up their stock of outdated weapons and ammunition.]] The Italians also had inaccurate maps and suffered from poor morale, while the Ethiopians obviously knew the terrain and forced the Italians to fight in an area of their choosing.

** During the Falklands conflict, there was a lot of fear in the Royal Navy that Argentina's American built WWII-era cruiser, ''Gerneral Belgrano''[[note]]Known in her former life in US service as the ''USS Phoenix''[[/note]] could pull something similar in combat. The Royal Navy simply didn't have missiles with enough penetration to defeat the cruisers armor, and didn't have ships with enough armor to withstand the cruiser's guns are added missiles. Fortunately for the Royal Navy, they had some rocks of their own, and sank the Belgrano with a WWII era torpedo (fired from a nuclear sub).

** During the Falklands conflict, there was a lot of fear in the Royal Navy that Argentina's American built WWII-era cruiser, ''Gerneral Belgrano''[[note]]Known in her former life in US service as the ''USS Phoenix''[[/note]] could pull something similar in combat. The Royal Navy simply didn't have missiles with enough penetration to defeat the cruisers armor, and didn't have ships with enough armor to withstand the cruiser's guns are added missiles. Fortunately for the Royal Navy, they had some rocks of their own, and sank the Belgrano with a WWII era torpedo (fired from a nuclear sub).
* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002 The Millennium Challenge 2002]] was a military combat exercise meant to showcase the power of the US's new communication tools, with them battling Red Force, an opponent meant to have the capabilities of an unnamed nation (it was Iran). They were expecting an easy CurbStompBattle, but the commander of Red Force managed to inflict some pretty lopsided casualties through a mix of low-tech communication methods (including refusing to turn on detectable communications) and spamming so many cruise missiles that the defenses were overwhelmed. Eventually, the exercise went so badly that it was called off and repeated, with Red Force ordered to carry out a script specifically to ensure the Americans could beat them easily.

* In 1940, the Norwegian garrison at the Oscarborg Fortress guarding the approaches to Oslo sank the Blücher, a modern German heavy cruiser, using guns and torpedoes that were more than 70 years old (originally delivered by Germans, ironically). Not quite "rocks," but certainly quite old and outdated technology.
* Until the advent of the breech-loading rifle, bows were generally superior to guns in terms of lethality at range, rate of fire, and accuracy; they also had the advantage of being able to arc over cover, as Custer found to his dismay. Indian rulers usually retained their archers even after they adopted Western-style firearms, and the Duke of Wellington, who had himself served in India and seen the effectiveness of such weapons, attempted to form a Longbow Corps during the Peninsular War, to act as an elite rapid-response force. However, by Wellington's time, the musket had completely displaced the bow, to the extent that there were neither sufficient skilled archers, nor fletchers to make the arrows.\\\
It is frequently forgotten that the primary reason that muskets took over from bows was not their greater efficacy, but rather the fact that they were much easier to train men how to use properly. Early firearms were inferior to bows in most respects, but training a longbowman was much harder than training someone to use a musket; an expert longbowman had to be trained pretty much from childhood on up (giving rise to the old quote ''"To train a longbowman, start with his grandfather."''), but an expert musketman could be trained and ready for battle in a few weeks to a few months. More importantly, unlike an archer, a man using a musket would not grow nearly as tired from using his weapon, nor would the power of his weapon depend on his strength, and a musket man could carry half a dozen balls and powder for each arrow carried by the archer. Likewise, military crossbows, for all their similarities and comparative advantages, required more skilled labour to manufacture and relied on muscle power, which would grow weaker over the course of a battle.

* The Russian Antonov-2 is a large all metal Bi-plane designed between WWI and WWII as a transport and scout plane. Today, it is still in service because it is very forgiving to fly: it can take off from anywhere, is near impossible to stall, and can actually travel ''backwards'' if heading into a strong enough wind. North Korea still employs them for actual military uses, including as a transport plane for special ops teams.

** During the Falklands conflict, there was a lot of fear in the Royal Navy that Argentina's American built WWII-era cruiser, ''Gerneral Belgrano''[[note]]Known in her former life in US service as the ''USS Phoenix''[[/note]] could pull something similar in combat. The Royal Navy simply didn't have missiles with enough penetration to defeat the cruisers armor, and didn't have ships with enough armor to withstand the cruiser's guns are added missiles. Fortunately for the Royal Navy, they had some rocks of their own, and sank the Belgrano with a WWII era torpedo (fired from a nuclear sub).

** During the Falklands conflict, there was a lot of fear in the Royal Navy that Argentina's American built WWII-era cruiser, ''Gerneral Belgrano'' could pull something similar in combat. The Royal Navy simply didn't have missiles with enough penetration to defeat the cruisers armor, and didn't have ships with enough armor to withstand the cruiser's guns are added missiles. Fortunately for the Royal Navy, they had some rocks of their own, and sank the Belgrano with a WWII era torpedo (fired from a nuclear sub).

* In a rather famous WWII engagement, the USS O'Bannon found itself alongside a Japanese submarine. Because the submarine was too close for their main guns to target, and since the crew had no sidearms, the O'Bannon's crew resorted to pelting the Japanese submarine crew with potatoes. The Japanese, thinking the potatoes were hand grenades, were too distracted trying to dispose of them to man their own deck gun, giving the O'Bannon the time it needed to gain distance and subsequently sink the submarine.

* The reason that the US Navy held onto the ''Iowa'' class battleships for so long wasn't because they were invincible, but because it forced the Soviet Union to invest in weapons that could counter them. The sinking the Italian battleship ''Roma'' proved the guided armor piercing missiles were an effective counter to battleships and the pacific proved appropriately armed aircraft could do the same. So everyone phased out battleships and as a consequence, everyone phased out anti-battleship weapons. So America just dusted its own battleships off, strapped missiles on them, and showed them off to a world that had no counter to battleships.

** Spear throwers and slings, long forgotten in Europe, proved an effective weapon against Conquistadors. It was said by Cortés that the dents and holes left by these weapons were indistinguishable from those left by muskets. There are also stories of Spaniards replacing their metal breastplates with native cotton armor, as well as guns being outshot by arrows, spears, and slings. On the other hand, the Spaniards' use of cavalry, cannon, steel weapons, and superior military tactics were pretty instrumental in conquering the Aztec Empire. It also helps that the Aztec empire was pretty unpopular among their neighbors.