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Not necessarily. I imagine the wars of the future will largely be automated and wars will be won or lost almost purely on logistics and manufacturing supply cha

Not necessarily. I imagine the wars of the future will largely be automated and wars will be won or lost almost purely on logistics and manufacturing supply chain management. Do you need walls when you have a drone above doing surveillance and an army of quadrocopters or other robotic flying machines that are doing 24/7 patrols along the perimeter and can arrive within 30 seconds?

Houshalter 10y ago
>Do you need walls when you have a drone above doing surveillance and an army of quadrocopters or other robotic flying machines that are doing 24/7 patrols Do you really think this is a stable strategy? Drones are probably cheaper to shoot down than they are to build. At least the quadcopters. Imagine a few very fast automated shotgun turrets with birdshot. Even if war is automated, the same basic strategies apply. The fortifications will just be built and manned by robots instead of humans.
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  Drones of the US Military type fly very high and are thus quite difficult to shoot down, especially if they have anti-missile missiles (I doubt any currently do as they are only used in battlefields where the enemy doesn't have good missiles). Quadrocopters could certainly be shot down by robots, but probably not by humans once they get fast enough at flipping themselves around and making evasive maneuvers.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    Anti missile defense other than jamming and decoys do not exist for airborne platforms. US drones operate in an uncontested environment let them try fly over Russian or Chinese airspace, the soviet shot down a bloody U2 thy can hit a globalhawk or a reaper.
    - ethbro 10y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-88_HARM https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-88_HARM ?
      - greedo 10y ago
        HARM is typically used to engage a SAM site's radar, not the SAMs themselves. Intercepting a missile is a bit harder than nailing a stationary emitter. Plus, many SAMs use IR sensors, so if you don't detect the launch signature, it's hard to take defensive actions. DIRCM, laser based dazzlers etc can help, but not if you don't detect the launch.
- VLM 10y ago
  "Imagine a few very fast automated shotgun turrets with birdshot." Mounted on a smaller, lighter, much shorter range defensive quadcopter. Don't even need the fancy weapons, just collide with the larger, long range, very expensive attacking quadcopter. Nothing is ever really new, and a lot of the "drones will solve everything" talk sounds exactly like "missiles will eliminate guns in military aircraft" from the 50s/early 60s. That didn't turn out very well, and if you ignore the details that don't matter, drones are tactically merely very slow, short range, traditionally cheaper, missiles. Yeah yeah the electronic speed controllers are infinitely interesting to a EE but to a grunt a drone weapon system is tactically a lame cheap missile. So your attack helicopter of the future will have drone wingmen, but it'll also have guns. Or some infantry platoons might carry a couple anti-armor drone weapons instead of a couple AT-4 or LAW rockets, but they'll still dig trenches and carry some kind of M16 variant.
mseebach 10y ago
Wars are already won or lost on logistics. That's why, in WW2, the allies ran a near-continous near-sucicide air bombing campaign against German industrial capacity (and to their eternal shame, civilians, too). That is why the Atlantic was so important, if the Germans could have choked off the supply chain from the US, they would have won the war more or less overnight. The ability to run the air bridge to Berlin after the war was also a logistical feat. But at the end of the day, the only purpose of the logistics are to support the fight to control the territory you need to win.
- gadders 10y ago
  Wasn't it Wellington who said something along the lines of "Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics."
  - mseebach 10y ago
    I had that quote in mind, but could not find a good attribution for it.
  - walshemj 10y ago
    Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk strategy real professionals talk logistics.
- VLM 10y ago
  A classic battle example was the Pusan perimeter from the Korean War, the NK had a staggering numerical advantage and pushed the US into the peninsula, the one with a perfectly operating seaport, which we flooded with people, supplies, material, but the NK didn't have air superiority so the US mauled the NK logistics system, and a few weeks/months later the NK had to walk home with no ammo or food. Of course there are limits to that strategy as the Chinese proved that if you're willing to lose 20 to 1 ratio you can simply deploy millions of infantry and ignore logistics, admittedly most of them will die, and regardless of logistic support next thing you know we're back south at the original DMZ. The situation in Khe Sanh was similar, OK you're outnumbered 10 to 1 and surrounded, that's sustainable for months as long as the airdrops keep coming in. Of course Dien Bien Phu was an example where the airdrops didn't come in and the French were wiped out. After the war Gen. Westmorland was savaged in the press, Trump style, for making fun of Gen Giap for being the worlds most predictable one trick pony, but now that the politics and tempers have cooled its "OK" to admit the general only had one strategy that he used basically every time. Of course, in the end, it eventually worked, so losing 90%+ of your battles is OK if the enemy eventually goes home in defeat.
dogma1138 10y ago
Fortifications are still needed and are cheap then instead of human grunts you'll have t-1000's digging trenches. A drone or a soldier it doesn't matter a sandbag that stops a bullet is still cheaper and faster to make than training or building a new combatant. All modern wars are in effect industrial wars at least when both sides are even remotely equal in military power, the US simply out produced both Germany and Japan to win the war. If you are fighting a war then it's always better to reduce force depletion than to increase manufacturing if nothing else than it's cheaper, faster and leaves you with more options for the long run.
- NoGravitas 10y ago
  Where "modern" ~= US Civil War and later.

Houshalter 10y ago

>Do you need walls when you have a drone above doing surveillance and an army of quadrocopters or other robotic flying machines that are doing 24/7 patrols Do you really think this is a stable strategy? Drones are probably cheaper to shoot down than they are to build. At least the quadcopters. Imagine a few very fast automated shotgun turrets with birdshot. Even if war is automated, the same basic strategies apply. The fortifications will just be built and manned by robots instead of humans.

zigzigzag 10y ago
Drones of the US Military type fly very high and are thus quite difficult to shoot down, especially if they have anti-missile missiles (I doubt any currently do as they are only used in battlefields where the enemy doesn't have good missiles). Quadrocopters could certainly be shot down by robots, but probably not by humans once they get fast enough at flipping themselves around and making evasive maneuvers.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Anti missile defense other than jamming and decoys do not exist for airborne platforms. US drones operate in an uncontested environment let them try fly over Russian or Chinese airspace, the soviet shot down a bloody U2 thy can hit a globalhawk or a reaper.
  - ethbro 10y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-88_HARM https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-88_HARM ?
    - greedo 10y ago
      HARM is typically used to engage a SAM site's radar, not the SAMs themselves. Intercepting a missile is a bit harder than nailing a stationary emitter. Plus, many SAMs use IR sensors, so if you don't detect the launch signature, it's hard to take defensive actions. DIRCM, laser based dazzlers etc can help, but not if you don't detect the launch.
VLM 10y ago
"Imagine a few very fast automated shotgun turrets with birdshot." Mounted on a smaller, lighter, much shorter range defensive quadcopter. Don't even need the fancy weapons, just collide with the larger, long range, very expensive attacking quadcopter. Nothing is ever really new, and a lot of the "drones will solve everything" talk sounds exactly like "missiles will eliminate guns in military aircraft" from the 50s/early 60s. That didn't turn out very well, and if you ignore the details that don't matter, drones are tactically merely very slow, short range, traditionally cheaper, missiles. Yeah yeah the electronic speed controllers are infinitely interesting to a EE but to a grunt a drone weapon system is tactically a lame cheap missile. So your attack helicopter of the future will have drone wingmen, but it'll also have guns. Or some infantry platoons might carry a couple anti-armor drone weapons instead of a couple AT-4 or LAW rockets, but they'll still dig trenches and carry some kind of M16 variant.

mseebach 10y ago

Wars are already won or lost on logistics. That's why, in WW2, the allies ran a near-continous near-sucicide air bombing campaign against German industrial capacity (and to their eternal shame, civilians, too). That is why the Atlantic was so important, if the Germans could have choked off the supply chain from the US, they would have won the war more or less overnight. The ability to run the air bridge to Berlin after the war was also a logistical feat. But at the end of the day, the only purpose of the logistics are to support the fight to control the territory you need to win.

gadders 10y ago
Wasn't it Wellington who said something along the lines of "Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics."
- mseebach 10y ago
  I had that quote in mind, but could not find a good attribution for it.
- walshemj 10y ago
  Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk strategy real professionals talk logistics.
VLM 10y ago
A classic battle example was the Pusan perimeter from the Korean War, the NK had a staggering numerical advantage and pushed the US into the peninsula, the one with a perfectly operating seaport, which we flooded with people, supplies, material, but the NK didn't have air superiority so the US mauled the NK logistics system, and a few weeks/months later the NK had to walk home with no ammo or food. Of course there are limits to that strategy as the Chinese proved that if you're willing to lose 20 to 1 ratio you can simply deploy millions of infantry and ignore logistics, admittedly most of them will die, and regardless of logistic support next thing you know we're back south at the original DMZ. The situation in Khe Sanh was similar, OK you're outnumbered 10 to 1 and surrounded, that's sustainable for months as long as the airdrops keep coming in. Of course Dien Bien Phu was an example where the airdrops didn't come in and the French were wiped out. After the war Gen. Westmorland was savaged in the press, Trump style, for making fun of Gen Giap for being the worlds most predictable one trick pony, but now that the politics and tempers have cooled its "OK" to admit the general only had one strategy that he used basically every time. Of course, in the end, it eventually worked, so losing 90%+ of your battles is OK if the enemy eventually goes home in defeat.

dogma1138 10y ago

Fortifications are still needed and are cheap then instead of human grunts you'll have t-1000's digging trenches. A drone or a soldier it doesn't matter a sandbag that stops a bullet is still cheaper and faster to make than training or building a new combatant. All modern wars are in effect industrial wars at least when both sides are even remotely equal in military power, the US simply out produced both Germany and Japan to win the war. If you are fighting a war then it's always better to reduce force depletion than to increase manufacturing if nothing else than it's cheaper, faster and leaves you with more options for the long run.

NoGravitas 10y ago
Where "modern" ~= US Civil War and later.