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What I find most interesting about the current Israel - Iran conflict isn't necessarily a lot of the geopolitical implications / consequences (although of course they are important), but instead the way the war is being waged. It seems, so far as I can tell, that they are almost entirely "trading missile strikes" and that no boots are on the ground, there isn't even really much of a naval component. Just missile centers in cities or in the desert shooting at one another, causing damage that, from a citizen's POV, is essentially random.
I know that the World Wars were considered horrible because death in combat felt so random due to bombings, machine guns, etc. Are we now entering a new stage of warfare where soldiers are barely even involved, and we just shoot missiles at each others population centers, trying to decapitate the enemy leadership?
On the one hand, it's certainly... cleaner, I suppose? Much better than the horrid conditions of trench warfare during the World Wars, at least based on what I've read about it. Still though, it feels extremely cold and random, disconnected from the perspective of the average person.
Then again, the whole war in the Ukraine is very much boots on the ground, even if drones are heavily involved. I'm not sure (obviously) exactly how the future of war will develop, but we are certainly seeing interesting new innovations as of late. And we have barely even scratched the surface of using AI in warfare!
What are your best predictions for how future warfare will develop?
Anyone who's been paying attention to defense issues in the past few years will point you in one direction: drones, drones, drones. They're going to be omnipresent in basically every serious conflict going forward. From what I've read about troops in Ukraine, they make things absolutely miserable. They're nearly silent killers with the panopticon effect -- it feels like they're always watching, even when they aren't. You get out of your trench for 5 minutes to take a leak, and bam, now your leg is blown off. You're bleeding out on the dirt hoping for medical evac, but the medics don't want to come because who knows if another drone could be on the way. So you lay there, drifting in and out of consciousness while in a puddle of your own piss. Maybe you live, maybe you don't.
It's so much worse than that.
I was just reading an interview with a Ukrainian medic and they air drop anti-personnel mines with drones. Not only do you need to watch the sky, you need to watch your step because there might be a butterfly mine there today that wasn't there yesterday.
It goes on and on
Its a terrible shame that wearable exo-suit tech is so far behind the curve compared to quadcopters.
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