War will be casualty-free for societies with drone soldiers until both sides have this technology. Building an AUV is ridiculously cheap, and can be done with

War will be casualty-free for societies with drone soldiers until both sides have this technology. Building an AUV is ridiculously cheap, and can be done with off-the-shelf components. Moreover, other countries have learned from the success of our drone programs, and are rapidly developing their own. It is almost a certainty that we will have drones deployed against us in our next major conflict. People tend to forget that there was a brief period where America was the sole nuclear power, and we could destroy whole countries with negligible risk to 'friendlies'. We had very similar discussions then. However, that monopoly of power didn't last, and the costs of deploying those weapons suddenly became infinite. I suspect that a similar symmetry will arise with robotic weapons. War will get weirder, but it isn't going to get any less risky.