Purpose: the purpose of the article is to analyze and generalize scientific thought on the structuring of generations of wars in military science to study the historical ways of economic support of wars for certain generations.
Design/Method/Approach: to achieve the goal of the study, its decomposition was carried out and the following was investigated: definition of the concept of “war”, the phenomenon of modern war is characterized by shifting the emphasis in its conduct from military to non-military instruments (hybrid war); the main approaches to the structuring of wars are analyzed and an analogy is made in accordance with the concepts of technological and wave development of society; graphically systematized approach to the historical periodization of generations of wars according to the concepts of technological and wave development of society.
Findings: the article analyzes the generations of wars in terms of concepts of technological and wave development of society.
Theoretical implications: according to the results of the research, the existing theory of military economics has been improved in the context of actualizing the relationship of generations of wars with the concepts of technological and wave development of society. This makes it possible to study individual wars in the context of each generation in terms of ways of their economic support.
Practical implications: the results of the study are the starting point for the improvement and development of the theory of military economics, taking into account the current development of economic processes, scientific and technological progress and the structure of society. The research initiates the solution of the scientific problem of developing a promising concept of resource provision for defense needs and improving the theory of military economics, based on the study of historical methods of economic support of wars.
Originality/Value: the value of the study lies in its practical significance for further research in the direction of developing a promising concept of resource provision for defense needs and improving certain provisions of the theory of military economics.
Research limitations/Future research: a limitation of the study is the use of publicly available sources. Future research is seen in the study of historical ways of economic support of wars after the wars singled out by US Lind within the proposed concept, as well as taking into account recent wars (military conflicts) (Russian-Ukrainian War, 24.02.2022).