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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?
No, strategic bombing has a mediocre track record and in most of those cases it was accompanied by full scale land invasions. Strategic bombing alone just makes the bombee really really mad at you. Israel is knocking the Iranians a few years back along the nuclear "tech tree". Regime change is a stupid goal if that's their goal, but who knows (they'd need a strong rebel group to arm at the very least).
I actually wonder if I'd rather be in a WW1 trench or Ukranian one. It's insane it's even a question. I think you have to pick Ukranian ultimately because of the advances in medical technology. But the technology isn't worth shit if you get droned while evac-ing, which is all too common...
Fiber optic FPVs have high quality and don't have LOS signal issues which means skilled operators can fly them into buildings and around inside them. This means they can even navigate them around say, the tarp you hung up on the front of the dugout, which used to do a pretty good job of stopping FPVs.
Getting hunted by robots is a nightmare, and they're only getting better and more capable.
Each war is different. USA v China would be all air and sea assets. We will probably see almost no footage aside from explosions in or around cities very occasionally.
Iran/Israel can't invade each other so all they can do is lob things back and forth. Note that Israel has a ton of air assets all over Iran though, it's not just missile bases firing at each other. USA/China also cant invade each other, so it would be a similar situation of plinking at each other. Although unlike Iran/Israel, there is actually ownership of Pacific islands (incl but not limited to Taiwan) who would change ownership depending on outcome.
Ukraine/Russia is what not winning the air looks like for sure. Although caveat that with the fact they're post-soviet armies with absolutely awful generals (and politicians making bad military choices) at the strategic levels so this was is significantly more sloppy and gruesome than if France and Germany suddenly decided to run it back for old times' sake.
Land: Defence is so strong right now with drone-spam. The effectiveness/cost of Class 1/2 drones vs their countermeasures is really hard to predict (lasers, AI targeting, cost of everything, reusable interceptors) and shapes land battles heavily so hard to say.
Right now class 1 and 2 drones are cheaper to make than to stop, so defence is really strong at the moment. The longer your attack takes and the further into my lines you get, the more drones I can vector onto your attacking troops. And it's hard to suppress my drones (unless you have air superiority).
Sea: I assume drone boats are the future. Carriers always/forever useful, but their fragility depends on the missile vs countermeasure balance, which we can't predict.
I think the meta stays the same, survivability onion doesn't change. Find the enemy and blow them up from far away.
AI allows you to spread out more and extend the reach of your eyes and weapons. So more smaller drone ships. Stealth and Zumwalt shaped, maybe semi submersible. Don't know enough about submarines but presumably similar.
Air: similar to sea. 6th gen fighters are shaping up to be bigger, for longer range and bigger/more ordinance. Also bigger engine = more electricity = more compute, if your 6th gen isn't also a drone C&C it's already obsolete. It'll be handfuls of 6th gen fighters commanding swarms of class 2 and 3 drones (which in turn, may deploy class 1 drones? Yikes). They'll have radar, missiles so the 6th gen doesn't need to give itself away doing these things.
Closing thoughts on USA vs China: it's the USA's game to lose. They're still ahead but the trend lines SUCK, and nothing about the current state of US governance indicates that's going to change dramatically. They shouldn't bail on the first island chain yet, but as someone who enjoys Pax Americana, I'm not feeling optimistic for my team's odds in 10 years. China can project force in its backyard even if it's never the #1 big dog.
I’m not even sure they’re ahead now. If you compare the US and Chinese Navies as a whole the US Navy looks better, but the US Navy is spread across at least four different oceans and seas, most of the Chinese navy is right there. And maneuverable re-entry vehicles and constant satellite surveillance make giant aircraft carries a lot less practical. Recent war games have indicated that getting carrier groups further west than Hawaii would be extremely risky. And that’s just the large extremely long range ballistic missiles, most of the fight for Taiwan would have to be within 100 miles of the Chinese coast. And that’s not even getting into the string of pretty worrying incidents lately that show a dramatic loss of basic seamanship skills in the US Navy (like accidentally scuttling the John Paul Jones).
Also for some reason it seems like most people picture a Chinese invasion of Taiwan like it’s Omaha beach in 1944 with Higgins boats full of Chinese soldiers getting mowed down on the beach, it wouldn’t be like that at all. It would be 2000 cruise missiles a day for three weeks before there was any kind of landing attempt.
And the presumed response looks like 2000 anti-ship missiles (or pre-placed torpedos) denying navigation to the entire strait, plus long-range anti-ship missiles used to declare a blockade of Chinese ports (see the Black Sea, but with potentially less regard for continued commercial traffic). Which isn't to say that would work out either, but the idea that Taiwan's defenses would crumble immediately like Iran's have isn't a guarantee either.
The bombardment Iran is getting isn’t even close to what Taiwan would get. It would look more like Iraq or Kosovo, but in a much smaller area.
OK, so China flattens the island (incidentally destroying any facilities of value they might want, or they're destroyed deliberately to deny them to the invaders), but hasn't at all harmed the ability of the US to deny landings or blockade China.
The main strategic value of taking Taiwan is removing the threat to China. Taiwan is in a position where they can easily bottle up Chinese naval traffic from getting into the South China Sea, and yeet missiles into strategic military and economic targets in the Chinese mainland. The chip fabs and any other economic value are a distant second. Ideally China would like to get those, which is probably why they haven’t invaded yet in the first place. China has its own chip fabs, so everyone else would be in a much worse position than China if they got destroyed.
Regarding your second point, for the US to blockade China, the United States would need to:
Taiwan would have to be really suicidal to do that. At the end of the day, Mainland China can bring missiles into range a lot more easily than the US can transport them to Taiwan.
I think that the more serious long term threat for the CCP is that Taiwan is a state which has Chinese culture and is not under their control. A successful, capitalist, proof-of-concept minimal version of China could really be a thorn in their side during an economic downturn. If it was just some expats in the West, that would be much easier to downplay. If it was really a distinct nationality, like Koreans, that would also be easier to tolerate.
But a world in which the pinnacle of technological progress, the most advanced microchips in the world, are produced by Chinese but the Chinese who produce them are not actually from the PRC but the descendants of the side which lost the civil war and retreated to Taiwan must be really painful for the CCP narrative.
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The American economy is not dependent on imports from China, and neither does it rely on exports to it. All it needs to do to blockade China is block the straits of Malacca and Tiran.
Massive immediate shortage of consumer goods, industrial parts and equipment, some kinds of food (which isn’t grown in China but is often shipped there to be packed or processed or canned), and basic military equipment (boots, uniforms, etc).
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