war machine

plural war machines

1. An individual weapon for war, especially a mechanical one such as a siege engine or tank.

   Kobe was a shambles; the slaughter of the cotton operatives by machine-guns became classic as the most terrific execution ever achieved by modern war machines.

   1908 February 19, Jack London, The Iron Heel, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., →OCLC

   1 more example

   And scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid Handling Machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians—dead!—slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; […]

   1895–1897, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, “Dead London”, in The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, published 1898, →OCLC, book II (The Earth under the Martians), page 282

2. The military resources of a belligerent country considered as a whole.

   The German war machine was more powerful than that of the allies at the start of the war.

   4 more examples

   The Covenant war machine continues its march to conquest; even with its head severed it is still dangerous.

   2007 September 25, Bungie, Halo 3, Microsoft Game Studios, published 26 February 2009, Xbox 360, level/area: Assembly

   […] instead of dismantling the surveillance state and war machine, the Obama administration and Democrats institutionalised it – and it will soon be in the hands of a maniac.

   2016 November 9, Trevor Timm, “Obama has handed a surveillance state and war machine to a maniac”, in The Guardian

   From the one million civilians killed in the Soviet war in Afghanistan (1979–89) to the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who’ve perished at the receiving end of Russia’s and Assad’s war machine, the chain of impunity is long.

   2019 June 28, Natalie Nougayrède, “Forget Putin’s ‘liberalism’ jibe. This man runs a war machine”, in The Guardian

   Go, Rihanna, go / Watch the fighter jet fly high / War machine gets glamorized

   2023, “Namesake”, in Sundial, performed by Noname

   Synonyms: military-industrial complex