But this, in fact, is what actual war looks like these days: Sometimes it’s a volley of 300 missiles and drones, and sometimes it is lean, targeted, and carried out covertly. Gone are the days of vast conquering armies and conventional military confrontations between two parties.

So, like what's happening in Ukraine right now?

I mean they use drones for some deep strikes causing minor damage but most of the actual advancement is made using artillery and boots on the ground.

Gone are the days of vast conquering armies and conventional military confrontations between two parties. So long as experts, the government, and the media worry only about a kind of war that is obsolete, it cannot see the war right in front of our faces.

The article makes a good point about the global warfare already underway, but is it really the WWI/WWII template that distracts people from considering today's global warfare as WWIII? During the Cold War we all came to imagine WWIII as a sudden and total nuclear devastation brought about by conflicting superpowers. When people express relief that WWIII didn't yet happen, they may mean "at least we didn't all get nuked."

Gone are the days of vast conquering armies and conventional military confrontations between two parties.

I'm sure they thought the same before the outbreak of WW2 as The-War-To-End-All-Wars had been so destructive.

I've heard other analysis that suggests the current state of play in the world resembles that in the run-up to WW1 and WW2. It would only take something like North Korea escalating aggression for the Trilateral Axis/Axis of Evil to become emboldened by the hope that the US is too distracted elsewhere and they could make their play for Taiwan, the Baltic states and/or Israel in the hope that they can radically change the status quo into one that better favours them going forward, shifting the balance of power away from the West. That could get messy very quickly.

@t3rmit3 As long as those missiles don't carry nuclear warheads, it's all manageable.

"War And Anti-War" by Alvin Toffler.

Toffler's 1996 book uses 'anti-war' to present the idea that the wars of the 21st Century would be so different from past wars that we needed a new name for the conflicts. He predicted a massive war with non-state actors, like the current fight against ISIS, before 9/11/2001.

People actually suggested this in the days after the 9/11 attacks; that we should not talk about a 'War On Terror,' but the idea was quickly shot down by so-called patriots.