The article deals with the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs - a sequence of transformations within military technology and tactic, uninterrupted since the fifteenth century and during the modern era enabling European societies to conquer almost the whole world. The aurhor analysed two examples: the emergence of the counter-march and steady fire tactic (The Netherlands, end of the sixteenth century) and the construction of nuclear weapons. Upon the basis of those instances he indicated conditions favouring the constant modernisation of the art of war, the extensive and interdisciplinary character of the related research, the cooperation of numerous research centres including civilian and military, with the former making the inventions and the latter adapting them for military purposes, and the cooperation between army commands and the, as a rule, civilian political leaders. Emphasis was placed on the fact that it was possible to create this type of long-term cooperation only within the European cultural range. In other regions (e.g. in modern Japan where the steady fire tactic had been applied earlier than in The Netherlands) the domination of the military-political factor over the scientific one, and the associated excessive tendency to render the research secret, always led to a standstill or even regress.