When all of these small-and-smart weapons meet up on the battlefield it's gonna be cray cray. However, it will not be anything new. All it's going to do is shr

When all of these small-and-smart weapons meet up on the battlefield it's gonna be cray cray. However, it will not be anything new. All it's going to do is shrink the same thing into a smaller space. Instead of an air force establishing air superiority over a theater, a platoon will launch a swarm of drones to establish air superiority over a tactical battle. We'll have the exact same rock-paper-scissors strategic tradeoffs, we'll just have them within smaller constraints of time and space. Sooner or later it will shrink all the way down to the individual. A far-future soldier will be accompanied by an array of personal small-and-smart weapons. Imagine the advantage you'd have in a knife fight if you could launch a little drone off your helmet to fly around behind your opponent and stab them in the back. Speaking of knives, that's going to be the most interesting (from an abstract point of view) part of the far future soldier's job. They will have to be proficient at every technology that's ever been introduced to warfare because they will have to be able to fall back to older, more reliable technology when the advanced stuff fails. The far future soldier will probably end up having to specialize in complimentary levels of technology. A squad will probably have a "designated swordsman" who's spent a lot of their time learning to use pointy sticks so that they can take the lead when someone deploys their "deactivate gunpowder gas." Someone else will have to understand the latest AI-enabled VR hacking interface so that they can take down the opponent's integrated autonomous defense system. Nobody's going to be able to do both of those things at the required proficiency.