Expedition (military)
In the military, an expedition is a military operation of a specially equipped large unit in a remote area, the purpose of which is to gain a strategic advantage while largely avoiding combat . Such advantages can u. a. be the security of raw materials or future supply lines, the preventive occupation of a strategically important area, the weakening of the defense lines of an enemy power or the hindrance of opposing offensives.
Characteristic for military expeditions are the overcoming of great distances and the movement in mostly unknown areas, which is why the area and situation exploration and extensive self-sufficiency of the unit or the deployed armed forces are of great importance.
After the First World War , military expeditions became less important because technical developments (including long- range weapons technology and improved military reconnaissance ) made them more difficult.
Historically significant military expeditions
- Sicily expedition 415 to 413 BC Chr
- Northern expeditions 228–234 South China against the Northern Empire
- Crusader Expedition to Gaza 1239
- Battle of Monongahela also Braddock Expedition 1755
- Sullivan Expedition 1779
- Napoleon's Egyptian expedition 1798–1801 against British supremacy in the Mediterranean
- Walcheren expedition 1809
- Expeditions to the liberation of Upper Peru 1810–1816
- Expedition to liberate Peru 1820–1822
- Morea Expedition 1828
- Canada's Red River Expedition to Manitoba in 1870
- Japanese punitive expedition to Taiwan in 1874
- Gordon Relief Expedition 1884–1885
- Hunza-Nagar Expedition 1891
- Dongola expedition also Battle of Firket 1896
- British Tibet expedition 1903/04 to incorporate Tibet into the Empire
- Nandi expedition 1905
- Niedermayer-Hentig expedition 1914–1915
- Suez Canal expedition of the Ottoman-German Asia Corps in 1916
- Mexican expedition 1916–1917
- German Caucasus expedition 1917–1918, Transcaucasus and Georgia
- Polar Bear Expedition 1918-1919
- Finnish expeditions to Russia 1918–1920
- Wehrmacht weather stations in the Arctic