Henschel Hs 129 Panzerknacker

Prior to World War I and during most of the war, the primary missions of the aircraft, airship, and stationary balloon were reconnaissance and artillery spotting. Making reconnaissance the top priority mission of the air arm was based on an accurate understanding of the nature of warfare and technology of that time. The Franco-German War of 1870 had been studied in minute detail by the French and German general staffs, as well as by the militaries of the other major powers. One of the most notable lessons of the Franco-German War was the vital importance of good intelligence and reconnaissance. Most of the early battles of the 1870 war—Spicheren (6 August), Froschwiller (6 August), Beaumont (29-30 August)—were unplanned battles, instances when the French and German armies simply blundered into each other. The result was a series of bloody slugging matches in which the Germans prevailed more by luck and by the mistakes of the French commanders than by any operational finesse. "The fighting at Spicheren, Froschwiller, Colombey, and Vionville had come as a surprise to the high command on both sides as an interruption and distraction to totally different plans." After the 1870 war, both the French and German general staffs therefore placed a high priority on improving their long-range operational reconnaissance.
Another lesson from the Franco-Prussian War was the significance of the new, rapid-firing, rifled-steel, breech-loading Krupp guns. Artillery assumed greater importance on the battlefield, and the longer range of the rifled guns required more precise observation at greater distances than the bronze muzzle-loaders that were used for most of the nineteenth century.
In the decades following the war of 1870, both the German and French armies emphasized reconnaissance in their general staff education and their war games. Both the French and the Germans looked to fixed hydrogen balloons as part of the solution for better reconnaissance and artillery observation. The Franco-Prussian War was scarcely over when both sides created committees that undertook experiments with balloons. By 1884, the Prussian army had created its first permanent balloon unit. The French had established their first balloon units in 1879.