war machines

Noun

war machine (plural war machines)

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

   Synonyms:

   military-industrial complex