Area denial weapons are used to prevent an adversary occupying or traversing an area of land. The most common are land mines of various types.
The massive use of defoliants such as Agent Orange can be considered as an interdiction measure because, at their highest concentration use they leave areas empty of any form of vegetation cover. In the desert-like terrain that ensues it is impossible for an adversary to travel without being seen, and there is nothing much left for taking cover in case of an attack.
Radiological or chemical weapons might also be considered as area denial weapons, although they are not considered militarily useful at present.
In medieval warfare sharp and sturdy stakes were buried at the bottom of long lines of ditches, with the business end up, in order to prevent cavalry charges in a given area. The correct layout of these extensive lines of ditches and the quality control of stake size, form and placement (they had to be big and sturdy enough to impale a very heavy horse) was part of the craft of war.
Areadenial has been around since man first walked the earth, and in the beginning amounted to little more than excluding others from a private cave or dwelling, but as societies developed, this soon expanded to wholesale exclusion of other societies from villages, towns and so on.
This was the first documented account of a bio-warfare agent being used against a civil population for areadenial purposes, but the method was crude in the extreme.
In a startling break with tradition, one British military doctor stated that in her view, 99% of the problems could be traced back to the anti-bacteriological warfare "cocktail" inoculations, and anti-nerve gas tablets forcibly administered to military personnel in the Gulf region at that time.
Areadenial weapons are used to prevent an adversary from occupying or traversing an area of land.
Radiological or chemical weapons might also be considered as areadenial weapons, although they are not considered applicable in this context at present.
The correct layout of these extensive lines of ditches and the quality control of stake size, form and placement (they had to be big and sturdy enough to impale a very heavy horse) was part of the craft of war.
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