Armored knights vanished when gunpowder weapons made them ineffective, and cavalry vanished when motorized transport and tanks arrived on the battlefield. I believe infantry will likely be the next category of warriors to disappear. History shows that survival, cost-effectiveness, and competitive advantage dictate military force composition—not tradition. The lessons are clear: when a combat role becomes too costly and too vulnerable compared to alternatives, it disappears. I will explain why trends in battery technology, robotics, and artificial intelligence are converging toward a point where humans will not be able to survive in front line combat. In their place, armies of robotic combatants will clash on future battlefields, and their deadly potential will alter geopolitics, for good or ill.
Human Frailty
The human soldier has many drawbacks. He or she is difficult to train, costly to maintain in peacetime, and difficult to sustain on the battlefield. Soldiers vary in health, strength, intelligence, and motivation. They can be defeated by exhaustion, mismanagement, or panic. Desertion, mutiny, and war crimes may occur among demoralized or undisciplined troops. When engaged in combat, soldiers require sleep, food, water, ammunition, fuel, and medical care. Because of psychological stress, they must be rotated out of the front line periodically to avoid becoming psychiatric casualties. Armies have evolved methods and doctrines for managing large groups of soldiers to offset these weaknesses, but the underlying problems remain.
Machine Advantages
The advantage of robotic soldiers over human infantry are numerous. Consider the basic logistics of sustaining a soldier in combat. A robotic system that needs no sleep, food, or water has obvious advantages over a human soldier. Broadening the comparison to encompass training, medical care, and retirement benefits makes the comparative advantage overwhelming for robotic soldiers.
The Technological Drivers of Change
1. Battery Energy Density
The main obstacle to the large-scale deployment of ground-based military drones is battery energy density. A mid-size autonomous ground combatant, such as a tracked or wheeled platform with armor and integrated weapons, would require roughly 5–8 kW of continuous power for mobility, targeting sensors, and onboard computing, plus bursts of 15–20 kW for sprinting, climbing, or active weapon use.
Baseline endurance target:
• 24 hours of intermittent movement and combat readiness (≈50% duty cycle).
• Energy requirement: 60–80 kWh total stored energy.
Battery density requirement:
• Assuming a 1,000 kg combatant with 20–25% of mass allocated to energy storage, the battery pack must deliver 300–400 Wh/kg to sustain 24-hour operation without resupply.
Current status (2025):
• Commercial lithium-ion: ~250–280 Wh/kg (Tesla 4680-class cells).
• Military-grade Li-ion/Li-poly packs: ~260–300 Wh/kg.
• Lab prototypes (Li-metal / solid-state): 400+ Wh/kg demonstrated in small cells.
Trendline projection:
• Historical gain: ~5–7% per year in practical fielded densities.
• Threshold for 24-hour autonomous combat operations (≈350 Wh/kg) likely to be met in 2028–2030 for production-grade packs.
At that point, a fully autonomous mid-weight robotic combatant will be able to maneuver and fight for an entire operational day without human resupply—removing one of the last logistical advantages of human infantry.
Humanoid or quadruped combat robots would have greater energy density requirements to attain a 24 hour operational capability without power recharge/replacement, but technology projections indicate that this level of battery power density will be attained within the next two decades. Enormous investments in battery technology are being made worldwide by the auto industry, and their technology advances will be exploited by robotic arms makers.
2. Autonomous Robotic Systems
Miniaturized actuators, lightweight materials, and adaptive AI will enable agile, stealthy, and precision-capable war machines. These systems will increasingly operate in swarms, with distributed lethality enabled by tactical coordination. The electro-mechanical problems have already been solved for a variety of combat robot types, and the necessary machine vision and combat mission software is well within the current AI state of the art. Thus many of the technical prerequisites for robotic soldiers are in place. Based on the emergence of aerial drones as a significant battlefield presence in the Ukraine war, military establishments worldwide are pouring resources into research and development of robotic combat systems.
3. Weapons Lethality and Precision
The proliferation of relatively cheap, high-accuracy drones, loitering munitions, and autonomous targeting systems will create an environment where battlefield survival time for a human combatant approaches zero. Sensor fusion and persistent surveillance ensure that once detected, targets can be engaged almost immediately by robotic systems. There is no vehicle or body armor that is immune to drone-delivered explosives, and even the most robust fortifications can be shattered or overwhelmed by a robotic attack. A decisive advantage is the kamikaze potential: autonomous units can function as sacrificial precision munitions at any moment, forcing adversaries to treat every robotic presence as an immediate threat. There will be nowhere to hide for human combatants, and small chances of surviving robotic precision strikes.
The Shape of Soldiers to Come
The synthetic evolution of robotic warriors will likely result in a variety of species, some airborne, some land-bound, and some with multiple mobility modes. Armament will range from conventional guns and missiles to non-lethal incapacitating weapons. Self-destruct capability will be a common feature for providing a kamikaze option. The main evolutionary branches will be aerial and ground-based, just as in the animal kingdom. Flying drones will excel at reconnaissance and distant strike tasks. Wheeled, tracked, bipedal, or quadruped drones will likely handle ground transport and logistics work, positional defense, and direct assaults. There may also be hybrid robotic combatants, such as vehicles that can carry and launch aerial drones. In parallel with the physical evolution of combat drones, there will be an evolution of drone intelligence as it moves up the gradient of capability from basic tasks, to tactical coordination, to strategic decision making.
Death from above
The dogs of war
The Battlefield of the Near Future
Future battlefields will be hostile to human presence—persistent surveillance, omnipresent drones, and automated fire control will make concealment and evasion nearly impossible. Many robotic units will have the capability to act as a munition, making retreating or damaged robots dangerous until neutralized. Human infantry will find survival, let alone effectiveness, increasingly untenable. The tempo of combat will increase beyond current norms because robotic soldiers will operate around the clock, pausing only briefly for battery replacement or recharging. Tactical decision making will be done in milliseconds, and combat engagements are likely to be short, intense, and decisive.
As unmanned combat systems become increasingly capable of tactical and strategic decision making, the high speed of their information processing raises the possibility of runaway escalation of conflicts originating in accidental or erroneous initial fighting. The design of safety mechanisms and escalation circuit breakers will be a critically important task for future developers and operators of autonomous military combatants.
The condition of civilians in war zones where robotic systems are active is a matter of great concern. There is no body of international law governing the actions of robotic soldiers toward civilians. Existing laws, such as the Geneva Conventions, will require modification to govern autonomous weapons and assign responsibility to those who operate them. Irregular warfare, such as guerrilla or partisan resistance will pose just as difficult a problem for robotic troops as it has for human soldiers. How will they decide if a civilian is a threat, and who will be accountable if the wrong decision is made?
Armed forces will restructure to integrate robotic maneuver brigades, autonomous patrol and denial zones, and remote human command roles. Kamikaze-enabled doctrine will favor attrition by material depletion rather than personnel loss. Logistics will prioritize energy and parts supply over food and medical evacuation. Although many near term changes can be foreseen, the secondary and tertiary effects of drone-based armed forces are difficult to predict. The replacement of human infantry with robotic combatants will have far-reaching geopolitical consequences. I will describe some possible outcomes in both negative and positive categories.
Consequences That Could Increase the Likelihood of Warfare
Lowering Political Cost of War – Politicians would face minimal domestic backlash when combat deaths are limited to machines, making the initiation of military action more palatable. Wars over marginal interests may become more common, with a higher risk of miscalculation and dangerous escalation.
Acceleration of Proxy Warfare – States can supply allied factions with robotic units without committing troops, expanding the frequency and scope of proxy conflicts. These wars would become proving grounds for new autonomous systems.
Collapse of Small-State Deterrence – Mass production of robotic soldiers by wealthy states undermines poorer states’ ability to deter aggression, increasing their vulnerability to coercion or invasion.
Strategic Re-weighting Toward Industrial Capacity – Military power increasingly depends on the ability to produce and maintain autonomous forces, shifting global influence toward nations with advanced manufacturing and critical resource control.
Erosion of International Law Norms – Existing laws of armed conflict are poorly suited to regulating autonomous warfare, leading to greater ambiguity in proportionality, combatant status, and civilian protection.
Proliferation and Insurgent Adaptation – Non-state actors acquire stolen or black-market autonomous units, adapting them for asymmetric attacks and terrorism.
Shifts in Alliance Dynamics – Alliances redefine military contributions in terms of robotic units rather than troop numbers, creating new coalitions and potential trust issues over proprietary technologies.
Consequences That Could Decrease the Likelihood of Warfare
Strategic Deterrence Through Overmatch – If major powers field highly capable robotic forces, the prohibitive cost of invasion may deter open conflict, much like nuclear deterrence in the Cold War.
Economic Interdependence of Robotics Supply Chains – The globalized nature of robotic systems manufacturing creates mutual dependency; war would disrupt both sides’ capabilities, discouraging escalation.
Deterrence via Escalation Risk – Autonomous systems with persistent surveillance remove plausible deniability for border violations, deterring provocations. Danger of uncontrolled escalation raises risks of armed confrontation.
Shift to Non-Kinetic Competition – The dominance of robotic forces reduces the strategic payoff of kinetic war, shifting competition toward cyber, electronic, and economic domains.
Conclusion
The displacement of human infantry by robotic combatants is not a distant hypothetical—it is an emerging military reality shaped by predictable technological and economic trends. The consequences will vary widely depending on how states integrate these systems into doctrine, how military alliances adapt, and how international law evolves to address robotic systems in warfare. While the transformation carries significant geopolitical risks, it also presents possibilities that could stabilize relations among states. In any event, the future fate of human foot soldiers will be what was described in a farewell speech by General MacArthur: they will just fade away.
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I would suggest that the title be revised…The Vanishing Paid Foot Soldier.
History is replete with examples of lessor forces bringing great armies to their knees. Until robots can ACTUALLY think like humans, they will always have at least that weakness relative to a well-organized human insurgency.
Additionally, the elite’s ranks and its protectors typically include much of the armed services. If you push them all into the precariat class, then it’s even more against the few. With or without robot defenders the target list just got a lot smaller.
You are like those WW1 generals who believed in the primacy of the cavalry charge and the initiative and bravery of individual soldiers when they were faced with industrialized slaughter in the form of the machine gun. You, like those generals, have no idea.
A well-organized human insurgency would have to stay alive and stay organized, which latter would require radio communications whose sources could then be immediately targeted by the slaughterbots sent in to end all biological humaniform activity within that target zone.
Robot swarms don’t need to think like humans when all the humans in the target zone are dead.
And you are like the WW1 generals who think the next technological breakthrough will win the war.
Perhaps these bots will be so efficient to repalce human infantry. But perhaps we should wait and see how effectively this non existent technology is first.
If we take the current big wars ongoing in Ukraine and Israel, the main issues that all sides have faced is a lack of infantry.
With the above article I see two major flaws. First of all mass robot armies would rewuire a level of industrialisation that doesn’t exist in most countries.
Secondly, a lot of investment will go into countering these robots. Juat as they have gone into countering drones which is already limiting their effectiveness. And depending what form these counter measures take we may find that basic infantry with low tech weapons are about the only thing effective on a lodern battlefield.
“…we may find that basic infantry with low tech weapons are about the only thing effective on a lodern battlefield.”
that was a trope in the first Stargate show. The Gua’Uld were amazed at how effective primitive projectile weapons were.
vs all the lasers and such.
but seriously, as both you and HH point out, this will take manufacturing ability.
LOL.
i guess that leaves USA out.
altho, i suppose we could just skip the middleman and throw money at the invading Chinese slaughterbots.
‘The Gua’Uld were amazed at how effective primitive projectile weapons were.’
Like with this demonstration-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjlCVW_ouL8 (3:18 mins)
And by a woman.
I think this may be a bit of a strawman, in that I’m not sure the “cavalry charge” as a tactic was highly favored. At least I would like to see better references tracing cavalry tactics from US Civil War through Franco-Prussian War, Boer War, and colonial wars. And other theaters than just the western front or Galipoli.
At least in the civil war, cavalry in recon and security roles was important, and in battle cavalry as mounted infantry or cavalry v cavalry seem more utilized than the shock attack of cavalry on infantry.
Some roles/missions such as the raid probably weren’t as useful in European wars.
That said, sure, the increased expenditure of small-arm and machinegun ammunition did force changes in tactics and operational logistics.
In the US I think we have a bias against any conservatism in military practice, always emphasizing the dreaded “fighting the last war” syndrome. Sort of the “There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today” mentality.
RE: the famous poem “The charge of the light brigade.”
There was a debate among the elites in the army about whether
a cavalry could successfully capture enemy cannon emplacements.
This ‘wager’ was the reason the charge took place in the first place.
The answer was YES and no. The light cavalry did capture the cannon emplacements, but the failure of the ‘heavy’ cavalry to follow up
made the charge to glory a stinging defeat. Ah, the days of
Glory. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.
Cavalry wasn’t really replaced until the tank (and trucks) were common enough in the latter half of the Second World War. Until then cavalry as mounted infantry, scouts, and transport was normal. Everyone including the United States and Germany had cavalry going into the war.
The problem with the cavalry charge is each participant was limited to exactly 1 horsepower vehicles.
Another aspect of Mano y Roboto is the idea that in WW2 it was reckoned that about 80% of GI Joes in harms way never fired their weapons. Robots don’t need no conscience.
I figure the role of infantry will evolve with tech, but so long as human society is the subject of the conflict, as in Gaza, human fighters will remain the final arbiters of the conflict in the end.
Economic interdependence is one thing I would not count on. That was the thing that was meant to make a great power war impossible on the eve of 1914, after all.
The Robots of August?
“Oh, why can’t they all be hard and shining with metal, and clean, like we Stronghold masters are, with a very minimum of flesh-strip holding them in shape? It makes for such a well ordered and hate-happy life, the way we masters are in Moderan, so shiny and steellike in our glory with new-metal alloy the bulk of our bodily splendor!”
– Incident in Moderan, David R. Bunch
“Suppose they gave a war and no one came?” was an antiwar slogan from the 1960s. Now we have at least one answer of sorts, but not the one we hoped for.
What is this current passion for endowing machines with pseudo-agency in matters of life and death? Unburdened by fear of pain and death, qualms of conscience, or remorse: the ultimate soldier. What could possibly go wrong?
My solution? Don’t have wars. Excuse me while I show myself out.
Hear, Hear!
and seconded.
and give everybody on the dern planet a handheld, limited range EMP device.
I heartily support both these ideas.
I’m all for wars as long as they are fought by those who wage them and not by the citizenry they are supposed to represent – or the impoverished nations they use as proxies for their power plays. If Trump we’re to lead the generals into a battle against Putin and his generals and it were put on pay-per-view the proceeds would pay off our national debt and still have money left over to eradicate global hunger.
But, yeah, if it’s the citizenry that is asked to fight to protect the egos (and financial interests) of powerful men then I’m totally with you.
As Eugene V. Debs said in his 1918 Canton, OH speech: Rich Man’s War, Poor Man’s Fight.
He went to jail for that.
So this post is about robots, but there will still be immense human carnage.
So get rid of the damn wars, and the Rich Men while we’re at it.
Sexism at its finest, I give you Hillary rodham Clinton, Victoria newland, and the current female crew in the EU/nato.
I myself have a uterus, but no great wealth. I don’t hate women, or men for that matter, but I do hate the wealthy vampires
And how would these robot soldiers account for electronic warfare? Russian FPV drones have moved to fiber optic as a result of electronic warfare. I’m not sure that would scale for all these larger robots with AI and what not but who knows. Also you can see in Ukraine that their ‘drone wall’ cannot make up for lack of people to fill the lines.
It’s 2025. Quantum sensor and quantum radio systems are now being tested aboard naval vessels as a solution for GPS guidance getting jammed. Google it — there was a piece in IEEE on it a few weeks back.
The gear is about the size of a very large stereo so you could put on board a medium-sized drone and larger.
As for EW jamming drone communications, it’s precisely that which is making drone swarms controlled by autonomous AI inevitable.
There will be massive strides in electronic countermeasures to reduce the effectiveness of such machines. Not to mention hacking. I suspect if this does come to pass it will sctuslly result ininfantry with basic weaponry becoming key on the battlefield. Something that isn’t be hacked. The Russians managed to hack American GPS guided artillery rounds and make them fall on ukranian positions. As a result these high precision shells had to be removed from action. I suspect the massove increase in computerised warfare will end up with “dumb” weapons and rounds becoming king again. Hey i could be wrong. But so could this author and there is little evidence so far that killer robots will work.
The reason Russia didn’t win in Ukraine on the first few months is becuase they had far too little infantry. Ukraine’s issues now come down to having too few infantry. The reason Gaza hasn’t been subdued yet is because Israle has too few infantry soldiers.
[1] David: there is little evidence so far that killer robots will work.
Drones are the primary cause of battlefield and civilian deaths in the Ukraine war, here on planet Earth in the year 2025. I don’t know where you are.
https://nationalsecuritynews.com/2025/04/drones-have-become-the-dominant-killers-in-the-ukraine-war/
https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/russian-drones-become-main-cause-of-civilian-1739279222.html
[2] David: Secondly, a lot of investment will go into countering these robots.
In fact, much effort and investment has already gone into it. Since 2002 the U.S. Department of Defense has been running its Hard Kill Challenge, the successor to its Black Dart program, trying to develop technologies to counter lethal micro drones. I repeat, since 2002.
Here’s an account of how it was going a few years backfrom the New York Times, the propaganda organ of the U.S. State,The Pentagon Tests Laser And Nets To Combat A vexing Foe: Isis Drones —
Paywalled original: – https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/23/world/middleeast/isis-drones-pentagon-experiments.html
Archived: – https://archive.ph/VF7tA
“These things are really small and hard to detect, and if they swarm in groups, they can overload our ability to knock them all down,” said J. D. Johnson, a retired three-star Army general … Organizers … were searching for technologies that could defeat enemy drones with “a fly-swatter approach.” Contestants had to destroy or disable 30 drones flying more than 250 yards away. A total of 10 systems competed, including four high-energy laser weapons and an attack drone that carried a big net to capture hostile drones, military officials said.
‘Military officials and contractors balked at talking about details of the technology involved, much of which is both classified and proprietary. ‘General Shields declined to provide specific details about the result of the shootout, other than to say, “What we learned is there are limitations with various technology.” ‘
You get the drift. There are no real answers when all it takes is for one micro-drone out of a swarm of four or five hundred to get through. As of 2024, here’s the mighty technology they’ve come up with–.
EOS Defence presents anti-UAV technology to US and Saudi officials
https://www.armyrecognition.com/news/army-news/2024/eos-defence-presents-anti-uav-technology-to-us-and-saudi-officials
They’re going to stop a swarm of drones with that, huh? Pretty funny stuff.
[3] Here’s an effort I was marginally involved with, in that someone at the VC company investing in the effort mentioned it to me, and I said, if something is better than nothing, this is something.
https://www.dcvc.com/news-insights/jon-gruen-fortem-technologies/
‘We are currently refining the F700 DroneHunter that’s deployed in Ukraine and we are developing a second drone size to take on larger drones. We are also exploring different payloads, including high-powered microwaves that can “fry” swarms of micro-drones, and even fully kinetic, explosive payloads. At the end of the day, our customers are looking for options, and so we’re constantly evolving our countermeasures to provide that flexibility.’
As of 2025, Fortem ain’t doing so great in Ukraine, as the news will tell you. But the high-powered microwave approach is where I’d put my money and an EMP release would definitely stop drones. Kind of drastic, though ….
[4] David: There will be massive strides in electronic countermeasures to reduce the effectiveness of such machines.
Nope, not with quantum gravity sensors there won’t. From the IEEE article I mentioned: ‘….quantum gravity sensing is unjammable and unspoofable. “You can’t spoof gravity without literally moving a mountain,” said Biercuk.
Quantum Gravimeter Provides GPS Backup on Australian Ship
https://spectrum.ieee.org/quantum-gravity-sensor
Anduril’s solution is to have the drones be autonomous enough (i.e. separate “AI” in each) so they can switch to independent mode when necessary.
Yup. EW jamming makes drones controlled by autonomous AI inevitable, as I said.
Science Fiction comes to the real world. All military advancements almost immediately come to law enforcement. So, no more cops in our future?
I remember the ‘big deal’ when crowd control was to have included a substance on the
ground so slippery that rioters could not stand up when charging. Unfortunately,
the police counter-attackers couldn’t stand up, either. But what gets me is
the lack of comments about such ‘lateral’ countermeasures which could (and would
be gleaned upon in case of such new tactics. As a minor example, it is well-known
that fighting during the ‘mud season’ in Ukraine is very difficult. As if wheeled or treaded robots might not also be a problem.
C’mon, folks, you’re not really using your imagination here. U-boats were
invincible….. until they weren’t!
Imagine the near future, say 2040 and there are no standing armies anymore, when an EMP attack takes out everything that needs electricity to wage war, and we revert to old school era tactics with green soldiers on all sides, including numerous sling brigades.
Wukchimini: when an EMP attack takes out everything that needs electricity to wage war, and we revert to old school era tactics with green soldiers on all sides, including numerous sling brigades.
Yup. Someone who’s thinking straight here. EMPs are only thing I’ve been able to think of that would be guaranteed to take out swarms of thousands of drones.
Though simultaneously, one is reminded somewhat of Einstein’s line: “I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
Looking at our planet, those societies most willing to wage such a robotic war, have the least manufacturing capabilities, and vice-versa.
Let’s hope it stays that way until cooler heads prevail.
marcel: those societies most willing to wage such a robotic war, have the least manufacturing capabilities, and vice-versa
Eh, I’d be careful about that assumption. You really don’t need manufacturing to have flying drones carrying bombs. You can run a drone with a smartphone chip for the brains, and IIRC people were already doing that by 2007-8, with the smartphone chip technology they had back then.
There are literally many millions of smartphone chips in the world.
Couple of examples —
University of Pennsylvania’s Autonomous Drone in 2015
https://spectrum.ieee.org/this-drone-uses-a-smartphone-for-a-brain
• A stock Android smartphone powered the drone’s vision and flight control
• No GPS—just onboard cameras and algorithms running on the phone’s Snapdragon chip
• Demonstrated at CES as a proof-of-concept for low-cost autonomous flight
Qualcomm Flight RB5 5G Platform in 2021
https://control.com/news/qualcomm-expands-drone-capabilities-with-worlds-first-5g-and-ai-enabled-drone-platform/
• Built around Snapdragon chips
• Supports AI-based obstacle avoidance, real-time navigation, and 5G connectivity
• Used in industrial, agricultural, and defense drones
• Originally adapted from smartphone architecture for NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter
CNTRL-F: “disease” = 0
Curious that in a comparison of strengths/weaknesses of humans vs robots, the greatest cause of armed forces casualties, historically speaking, wasn’t even mentioned.
You are like those WW1 generals who believed in the primacy of the cavalry charge and the initiative and bravery of individual soldiers when they were faced with industrialized slaughter in the form of the machine gun. You, like those generals, have no idea.
A well-organized human insurgency would have to stay alive and stay organized, which latter would require radio communications whose sources could then be immediately targeted by the slaughterbots sent in to end all biological humaniform activity within that target zone.
Robot swarms don’t need to think like humans when all the humans in the target zone are dead.
That’s step one.
Step two is to send all the robot armies to the moon so we don’t have to worry about them down here.
Step three…well…
https://english.lem.pl/works/novels/peace-on-earth
“Even a fool could see that one didn’t need a war, nuclear or otherwise, to destroy oneself; the rising cost of weaponry could do that quite nicely.”
The robot armies won’t be used in war, they will be used to keep us under control. “Work 18 hours today, every day, or we’ll blow up your house”.
Yep, just like all those MRAP vehicles that Western militaries produced in enormous quantities. Barely useful on the frontline (against tanks, IFVs, RPGs, ATGMs. etc), but perfect for policing and scaring the plebs.
The real question here is: “Would you invest your life savings in a human infantry replacing robotics startup company presenting this article as a pitch?”
Going by history, I suspect that drones or robots, like tanks, planes, and machine guns, will just be another very important, even decisive at times, weapons, but still only adjacent with, not superseding, people in combat; as always with new weapons, the horror will increase with the new ways of destruction, suffering and death, but people will still be there, still required to be so.
Agreed. Military robotic/drone resources will rarely be balanced between opposing forces, and even if we assume they are, one side will eventually attrit the opposition’s robotic/drone forces. Are we to then assume that the opposing side will surrender due to the loss of the drone forces? I believe this to be laughable. When have elites not enthusiastically sacrificed their lower classes to prolong a conflict? Human combat forces are not going away. They will just have another deadly threat to deal with on the battlefield. This story has been repeating itself for all of human history.
I think that Skynet makes a ton of sense (Anduril Founder Luckey Palmer on the Shaun Ryan Podcast)
I can’t listen to the man-child, but fast readers will find a lot of interest on the tech side. There’s cogent stuff on AI, robots (humanoid and otherwise), exoskeletons, drones and missiles.
From Star Wars based AI overlord theory:
Now, by the way, there’s something to be learned from that which is Put the AI brain in each of the robots don’t require a data link that can be jammed or hacked or broken, or a central command post that can be destroyed anyway. They didn’t know that on Naboo, the Trade Federation really screwed up and they had it all going on in the cloud. But like, for some reason, nobody remembers the Trade Federation. They all just talk about Skynet.
Here’s his view of when robots will supercede Navy Seals:
30, 40, 50 years minimum. There’s some things that move fast and others that don’t. But I mean, because here’s the other thing you have to remember, and I think we talked about this a little bit earlier, but you’re also able to augment people. So the right comparison is not Navy SEAL of today versus robot ten years from now. It’s what could a Navy SEAL look like in 10 years in terms of their biological modifications or conditioning, in terms of their mental modifications or conditioning. Things like Exoskeletons, things like more advanced mobility, things like more advanced small arms. All of those are going to make the Navy SEAL a moving target as well. So the robots would have to get not just as good as a SEAL of today, they’re going to have to be as good of a SEAL of that era.
On full Lattice (AKA Idiocracy Skynet) integration:
What I wanted to finish and say is the common misconception is that because we built these hardware products on top of Lattice, that Lattice is only for Android hardware products. That is not the case. We have integrated lattice with over 100 existing DoD platforms. So we’re taking these brains and we’re hooking them up to systems that are already used by Dodge. So, like, vehicles, they already have weapons. They already have sensors that they already have. We’re basically taking everything, not just our weapons, but everything that they have, and we’re trying to glue it all together into one common hive mind so that all the people, all the vehicles, all the robots have a common shared view of the world, basically in real time, seeing everything that’s going on in the battlefield. So you know where the good guys are, you know where the bad guys are. You’re able to predict what’s going to happen in the near future so that you can have everything kind of, you know, skating to the puck, as it were, rather than reacting to what happened 10 minutes ago. And it’s a really powerful thing to do, to take these systems that used to be siloed and just be their own little stovepipe worlds and instead bring them into one gigantic brain.
I dislike the man and what he is doing but am interested to hear what he says also. Wading through the sales pitch, spin etc, he’s actually pretty open.
What will hold the territories other than soldiers? This seems like a retread of the old Vietnam adage that victory through superior (air) firepower, but if you bomb an area, you still need people to occupy and hold the space for your advance.
As long as the USA maintains its manufacturing and scientific dominance it will be fine…
the giant sucking sound…https://www.youtube.com/shorts/lcV2ov2cuC0
“Strategic Re-weighting Toward Industrial Capacity – Military power increasingly depends on the ability to produce and maintain autonomous forces, shifting global influence toward nations with advanced manufacturing and critical resource control.” – and there we have it. We’re heating earth up to produce dead zones for agriculture, species extinction, and a wave of climate refugees. I estimate that within 20 years no nation will have ‘critical resource control.’
Execute General Order 24.
I think a lot of readers are missing something important and that was that video clip showing “Operation Freedom Tehran” from one of the Robocop film. That film was a warning that the elite would then use that technology back at home in the US, supposedly for “law enforcement” to make people feel safe but whose end game would be a sort of “Operation Freedom Homeland” I suppose that you could call it. Now coming to a neighbourhood near you. But as Tom Stone astutely points out, this only work when so long as the USA maintains its manufacturing and scientific dominance and right now the US cannot even manufacture artillery shells in quantity after three and a half year of war.
They said the same thing about infantry when modern air power arrived. And tanks.
Only infantry can effectively hold ground, and that’s why infantry will be the very last of the armed forces branches to disappear.
Everything on a battlefield exists to kill infantry.
“You are either in the infantry, or you support the infantry.”
What kind of planet will all of these things be fighting for?
Where are the operators and charging or battery swapping stations for the robots requiring Tesla sized batteries? The Ukraine war has required tens of thousands of FPV drone operators and support personnel.
I suppose billionaire Luckey Palmer thinks AI robots can do it all. Autonomous logistics will bring robots and batteries to the front. Robots will find and neutralize the millions of land mines. Repair robots swap batteries. People are unnecessary.
The lunatics are in charge.
They’ve been in charge throughout most of the history of human “civilization.”
First chart has an error: infantry often demonstrate a considerable capacity for self-sacrifice (“kamikaze potential.”)
Author fails to mention the versatility of infantry. All-weather, all-terrain capability. Fully integrated sensor, processing, and communication package. They can not only fight, but they can dig, build, dismantle, and fix. Humans modify the environment. Infantry not only occupy battleground–they transform the battleground.
Sure, anything can be made obsolete. But do you really want to bet against infantry, given the track record? Here’s a brief review:
Infantry have remained in battle through chariot tech, stirrup tech, artillery tech, high explosives tech, machine gun tech, poison gas tech, airplane tech, AFV tech, and MRL tech. Infantry have persevered not only in the face of new weapons, but also in spite of the telescopic sights and infrared sensors that can see when they can’t, and in spite of the telephones and radios that can talk where they can’t. Machines exceed men all the time, and have for ages. But in the latest wars, everbody still wants infantry.
Military conservatism is often justified. The battlefields of the future may well belong to the robots, but like the advent of gunpowder, some big transitions in warfare can be very prolonged.
The same endurance for millennia argument could be made for cavalry until the 1940s. Some of the U.S. special forces in Afghanistan rode horses, demonstrating the military advantages of horses. How many cavalry divisions exist today?
Whenever you you see “armoured knights vanished because of gunpowder” you know an author is out of their depth.
With absolutism and advances in agriculture and therefore logistics armies became huge. Knights were expensive and cost too much to raise units that were big enough to generate their shock value when the knights themselves were more valuable as officers. Knights evolved, they did not disappear. White armour coexisted with gunpowder for centuries.
Yep, knights vanished, but (more or less shining) armor did not.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuirass
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulletproof_vest
I doubt that author experienced war or military service in real life. A soldier have always been the essence of warfare. In order to replace him, one would need to have a robot that is as good as human in many things. A T-800 of sorts. We are nowhere near that, in spite of all the promises of tech bros.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdkwjs_g83w
Enjoyed the comments of Michaelmas and Rev Kev. The focus early in the Vietnam War was sensor technology I recall reading about in Time in 1961 and as the war progressed further technology in the form of massive bombing was invoked as the solution. In fact the leadership in Vietnam was a disaster—Westie was going to bring the NVA to their knees at Khe Sanh but totally failed to understand Khe Sanh was a ruse for the Tet offensive. Litttle attention has been paid to the fact that MACV headquarters at Tan San Nhut was almost overrun by NVA/VC. Then Nixon decided he was Patton and ordered the Cambodian Invasion which was a failure to this day not acknowledged as a collapse of morale in 1970 which I witnessed first hand. The technology is fine, however, the quality of leadership as noted in Thomas E. Ricks book The Generals, finds the quality of leadership lacking. Seems right.
One thing war craves is individual ‘heroes’ who if it was peacetime would be considered mass murderers and i’m talking about you Sgt York, Audie Murphy, Carlos Hathcock, et al.
Do we pin medals to outgoing drones and missiles?
You pin all medals on Trump.