Bret Devereaux

Loved to read it. I have one question: I assume both sides ran into some combination of physics, metallurgy and economics when trying to develop artillery with enough range to hit the artillery of the other side. Or was this a red queen problem?

Mostly the Germans maintained something of a range advantage and the edge in heavy artillery for most of the war. The big issue is that longer ranges mean bigger guns and there are practical limits to how big you can go before the gun is immobile (and thus very vulnerable).

The solution to *that* was railway guns (where the gun is mounted on a specialist railcar) but that both increases costs massively but also limits where you can take the gun. Such large guns also tended to wear out quickly and fire slowly.