Abstract The military use of subsurface geologic environments dates back at least 5,000 years to Mesopotamia and Egypt, and continues to be a critical element in planning for both tactical and strategic military activities worldwide. In the context of present-day concerns of “proliferation,” the concept of geologic barriers and how best to defeat them has taken on new meaning. Characterization of the geology and the engineering properties of materials surrounding and constituting a deeply buried bedrock underground military facility (UGF) is of great military interest The degree of success of employing conventional munitions against such UGFs will be limited by our ability to understand the matter/energy interactions between penetrating conventional warheads and rock environments. Geotechnical information that can be used strategically to evaluate the vulnerability of UGFs is herein defined as “strategic geologic intelligence” and includes lithologic characterization; intact mechanical, weight/volume, penetrability; and interpreted in situ engineering properties of geologic units proximal to UGFs. Geologic vulnerability of UGFs can be considered primarily a function of three variables: depth, rock-mass strength, and surface-layer penetrability. To the degree that any bedrock UGF is vulnerable to conventional weapons attack, the availability of appropriate site characterization data significantly increases one's ability to choose optimal weapons and tactics to defeat UGFs. Thus the role of “strategic geologic intelligence” in future war planning cannot be overstated.

This book complements the Geological Society’s Special Publication 362: Military Aspects of Hydrogeology . Generated under the auspices of the Society’s History of Geology and Engineering Groups, it contains papers from authors in the UK, USA, Germany and Austria. Substantial papers describe some innovative engineering activities, influenced by geology, undertaken by the armed forces of the opposing nations in World War I. These activities were reactivated and developed in World War II. Examples include trenching from World War I, tunnelling and quarrying from both wars, and the use of geologists to aid German coastal fortification and Allied aerial photographic interpretation in World War II. The extensive introduction and other chapters reveal that ‘military geology’ has a longer history. These chapters relate to pre-twentieth century coastal fortification in the UK and the USA; conflict in the American Civil War; long-term ‘going’ assessments for German forces; tunnel repair after wartime route denial in Hong Kong; and tunnel detection after recent insurgent improvisation in Iraq.

Abstract The islands of Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark lie close to the Normandy coast of France. They expose a largely Precambrian crystalline basement of metamorphic and igneous rocks – Jersey and Alderney also expose some early Palaeozoic clastic sediments – and all have a thin but widespread Quaternary sedimentary cover. The three largest islands were progressively fortified by the British between the early 13th and mid-19th centuries, and by German forces during occupation in World War II, a legacy illustrated by the castles, forts and numerous German coastal fortifications that still adorn them. A German military geologist based on Jersey from mid-1941 to mid-1944, and a military geological team on Guernsey and Alderney during 1942, generated hydrogeological maps and reports that were then in advance of understanding of crystalline basement aquifers elsewhere in the British Isles. All the major documents have now been found in Germany, the USA and UK, although none survived on the islands themselves. Geological mapping and hydrogeological studies postwar under the auspices of the British Geological Survey were completed without access to German data. However, German and British data together now facilitate an appraisal of the heavily stressed aquifers on these small, hard-rock islands over an unusually long (65 year) timespan.

Abstract There has been much debate about the fault pattern of Nisyros Island at the southeastern edge of the Aegean volcanic arc. The small active volcanic island, less than 200–100 ka old, is dominated by a well-developed caldera and by post-caldera domes that are less than 25 ka old and up to 600 m high. Detailed mapping of the tectono-volcanic features of Nisyros have revealed that faults have a clear radial pattern, and they are more abundant in the northwest of the island, where volcanic domes are also concentrated. In contrast to previous speculations that certain major faults control the tectono-volcanic development of Nisyros, this paper argues that the radial fracture pattern is expected where faulting is a secondary effect of volcanic doming. Structural, coastal and archaeological evidence supports this contention. Most faults have a short fault length and a ‘scissors-type’ geometry typical of magma or salt ascent dynamics, and variable throws that are too high to reflect simply tectonic effects. Elevated coastal marine fossils (vermetids) in the northwest of the island indicate rates of uplift too high to be explained solely by differential fault movements. In the same area, a fault that borders the fortifications of a fourth-century BC castle is inferred to be the source of seismic damage effects observed in its ramparts and responsible for the near-total destruction of its westernmost fortifications. Together, the evidence suggests that localized high rates of uplift, faulting and tilting reflect tectono-volcanic deformation effects, and remind us that associated fault activity is likely to have constituted a major threat for the island since antiquity.

Abstract Napoleon Bonaparte was, in 1798, the first general to include geologists as such on a military operation. Within the UK, the following century saw geology taught, and national geological mapping initiated, as a military science. Nevertheless, military geologists were not deployed on a battlefield until World War I, first by the German and Austro-Hungarian armies and later and less intensively those of the UK and USA. Geologists were used primarily to guide abstraction of groundwater, construction of ‘mine’ tunnels and dug-outs, development of fortifications and quarrying of natural resources to enhance or repair supply routes. Only the USSR and Germany entered World War II with organized military geological expertise, but the UK and later the USA made significant use of military geologists, albeit far fewer than the c . 400 in total used by German forces. Military geologist roles in World War II included most of those of World War I, but were extended to other aspects of terrain evaluation, notably the rapid construction of temporary airfields and factors affecting cross-country vehicular movement (‘going’). After 1945, more military geologists were used in the USA than Germany or the UK, in these and wider roles, but mostly as civilians or reservists.