In the Middle Ages, Swiss farmers fighting the imperial Hapsburgs were particularly fond of the weapon, using it to toss noble knights off their horses.
The Moroccans used them in the fighting and have now deployed them as their main weapon alongside the 900-mile sand wall, the "Berm" - that they constructed as a barrier between Western Sahara and the Saharawi camps in Algeria.
The chief of naval operations says stocks of precision- guided munitions -- the wonder-weapon of choice in Kosovo and Iraq -- are "below the current war fighting requirement, " which poses a "major risk" to U.S. forces.
Even though there has been physical fighting in the recent conflicts in the Middle East, technology has helped make words become a powerful weapon-of-choice.