Aquatank wrote:There are both perks and flaws to the R/C and autonomous approach to warfare. The two major flaws IMO with R/C are transmission lag time and hackability. Any computer is hackable. There are numerous problems with fully autonomous including programming robotic ROE as well as friendly, enemy, and non combatant identification, further more being an AI makes it hackable. On the plus side robots won't commit as many warcrimes from emotional response but there collateral damage capabilities may be terrible. Also the amount of allied casaulties goes down. Unfortunately as has been noted even as we go to more and more PGMs our world's wars' civilian casaulties death tolls are going up from less than 10% to over 45% in less than 1/2 a century.
That doesn't mean there will not be advances the prime example will be largely the introduction of graphene as armor for foot soldiers all the way through MBTS and Battlecruisers. Effectively this would make a 55ton MBT like the M1A1 a 15-20 ton tank with faster speeds and better mileage. The other development will be the introduction of the EM Coilgun as a battlefield weapon to take out graphene armor. Metal storm is effective but like all of war its only part of an arms race between weapons and armor. For the time being that means Armor will win for awhile and possibly force battlefields into stalemates for those who have it.
Further complicating the problem is NGO asymtetrical warfare, more and more military units will have to become more oriented to SWAT type conflicts than large battlefields, while nations must become more prepared for NBC warfare since large scale invasions of the past would become little more than cannonfodder in some places.
all true.
