Drones cannot occupy a city. Drones cannot hold land. Even in the grim darkness of the 21st century, a drone is far more susceptible to outside factors eliminating its fighting capability than a human soldier standing in the same spot. At the end of the day, yes, a bulk of the fighting will be done by remote, but you’ll still need meatbags with guns to actually advance and take areas. There’s really no way to get around that unless we somehow develop autonomous robots that are able to make smart choices and strategize on the ground without human oversight, and I simply don’t see us managing any serious level of “AGI” from the current idea of machine learning, at all.
Target identification, threat assessment, determining level of force necessary, simply being a human face rather than a machine. Drones are also vulnerable to electrical issues, signal issues, all sorts of things a human simply doesn’t need to worry about or are more easily remedied in a human.
Occupying land is not simply about killing the enemy, and multiple armies have learned this over the course of human history. Rarely are you concerned with SIMPLY taking the land - even if it’s agrarian capacities or whatever you’re worried about, having the employees still alive (largely) leads to better outcomes. Having a functioning economy in the occupied zone leads to less resistance. Facilitating the continuity of life within the occupied zone does too - and that doesn’t work if your “occupation force” is a bunch of robot dogs that mow down anyone for being in the street.
Soldiers are not getting killed. Innocent people don’t count.
who? everyone that joins Russias army to be cannon fodder does it willingly, there isn’t a draft (as of yet anyways)
there’s ~30,000 Russian losses per month
“willingly”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/08/russia-ukraine-war-rural-communities
just look outside the city and you’ll see the “willing” participants who “chose” war instead of starvation
war fucking sucks man. They’re still an enemy soldier who’s invading a nation trying to defend itself, I wouldn’t consider that an “innocent person”.
In the future. The soldiers will be safely far away from the front lines. Ordinary people won’t be.
Drones cannot occupy a city. Drones cannot hold land. Even in the grim darkness of the 21st century, a drone is far more susceptible to outside factors eliminating its fighting capability than a human soldier standing in the same spot. At the end of the day, yes, a bulk of the fighting will be done by remote, but you’ll still need meatbags with guns to actually advance and take areas. There’s really no way to get around that unless we somehow develop autonomous robots that are able to make smart choices and strategize on the ground without human oversight, and I simply don’t see us managing any serious level of “AGI” from the current idea of machine learning, at all.
what can a human do to hold land that highly armed autonomous vehicles can’t?
Target identification, threat assessment, determining level of force necessary, simply being a human face rather than a machine. Drones are also vulnerable to electrical issues, signal issues, all sorts of things a human simply doesn’t need to worry about or are more easily remedied in a human.
Occupying land is not simply about killing the enemy, and multiple armies have learned this over the course of human history. Rarely are you concerned with SIMPLY taking the land - even if it’s agrarian capacities or whatever you’re worried about, having the employees still alive (largely) leads to better outcomes. Having a functioning economy in the occupied zone leads to less resistance. Facilitating the continuity of life within the occupied zone does too - and that doesn’t work if your “occupation force” is a bunch of robot dogs that mow down anyone for being in the street.
that’s not where future warfare is headed. theres still a frontline that needs to be defended/attacked