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Tanks, Troops in the Open Are Hit Within 10 Minutes: Ukraine Official
(www.businessinsider.com)
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this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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Drones don't conquer areas. Drones don't search for explosives or hidden defenders. So no, this will not change the number of soldiers but just be an andditional wave before them taking over the job that precision-guided artillery is fullfilling now.
Also there are only very few situations where a new type of weapon actually replaced older ones. Not without decades and decades of the existing ones being adapted to new tech and tactics.
Your "we don't need forward deployments other than limited air defense anymore"-argument is the same wrong simplification we heard about the end of tanks after every single bigger engagement since ww1.
You think they can make a machine do parkour, and they can make a machine navigate collapsed buildings, but they won't be able to make a machine that can clear a building?
No, they actually can't, they can make a drone that can parkour a know course. On a good day an unknown course strictly comprised out of known parts. The more autonomous the task, the harder it gets.
Contrary to public believe A.I. isn't actually intelligent but really dump. They can only work well with permutations of known things but are still rather helpless when confronted with unknown factors.
We’ve been using drones to search buildings for like 15 years already? Sure troops will be needed to secure a population, but drones will be the front line.
And the end of tanks since WWI… where tanks were first introduced? Wut.
Yes... since WW1. After exactly any war people where eager to proclaim the end of tanks as warfare had obviously adapted and they were far to expensive and ineffective. Every single time. But the reality is: no one cares about the cost or efficiency as long as there isn't a replacement that can fullfil their vital role. And so the tactics and some details were adapted instead.
The same is true for drones. It doesn't matter what they can do. They can't fullfill the same role as infantry so they will not replace infantry but will be adapted for more use cases by infantry instead.
PS: I'm obviously speaking about land based warfare here. Air combat is a different thing and much easier to adapt drones to (traversing terrain is one the most obvious issues of a drone -even more so when it has to identify all terrain for autonomous operation- that mostly does not exist in wide open spaces). So you will see a dozen pilots being replaced by 2 and a swarm of drones carrrying weapons and equipment or carrying out objectives. But you will not see the same for infantry for a very long time because somewhat autonomous operation in the chaotic terrain of ground combat is still science fiction. And non-automonous drones will be defeated by infantry using EW, not by anti-drone drones.
No drones won't be the frontline. You cannot use drones to physically hold an area, and they can be rendered useless in inclement weather or by signal jammers.
Not to mention, if you need to actually clear houses out like the U.S. did in Fallujah, you would needs tens of thousands of men. No amount of drones would suffice to replace them for this task.
And yes. People have been saying the tank is obsolete in almost every conflict it has fought in. Including the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The drone has not made anything obsolete, but it has changed how effectively you can use soldiers and equipment.