The future will be boots on the ground, men engaging in hand-to-hand combat, one dies/one lives.
That might occur in the context of standoff weapons or cheap drones or AI or whatever, but all of those things will be to facilitate a scenario where your side brings more men to that fight, that your men have an advantage in that fight, and that the fight actually reduces the other side's ability to do the same to you.
Somehow, it hasn't gone away. There's a disputed border region between China and India where at least 24 soldiers were killed in Jume 2020 in hand-to-hand fighting between the Indian and Chinese militaries.
To be fair, that situation is an extreme outlier even by most pre-modern warfare standards. Exceptions don't prove rules, but they sure highlight the common case.
Are you sure? It seems that the obvious way for drones to "occupy" land is to embed an IFF transponder in every human that is authorized to be in the area, and then program your drone swarm to kill every living thing that is not identified as friendly. The reason this hasn't happened yet is that nobody ruthless enough has yet gained control of a drone swarm. But this is a social, not technical obstacle, and one that is disturbingly likely to fall in the next decade.
That's quite a dark thought. And I doubt we'll get there - in that case you'd be one failed chip away from death at all times. Nothing like redefining the reign of terror.
Yes, it is a dark thought. There have been many leaders in history where millions of people have been one failed harvest or missing piece of documentation away from death at all times, and the leader didn't care. (And worse, much of the population backing the leader didn't care either, as long as it wasn't them.)
Hey not sure why you're getting downvoted, you had a genuine question and I think it's a common misconception.
If you play out the drones, standoff weapons, ICBMs, whatever...at the end of the day war is about taking something from someone or stopping someone from taking from you. All the tech nets out and it's you face to face with another human.
All of the tech is context of the face to face.
And your comment about battles vs wars isn't wrong, but reducing "supplies and support" just sets you up to have a an easier battle. Maybe you reduce the other side's capacity to do battle so effectively that the next "battle" is just you walking into the other side's capitol/village/home, but you still actually need the boots on the ground to go do that thing.
The future will be boots on the ground, men engaging in hand-to-hand combat, one dies/one lives.
That might occur in the context of standoff weapons or cheap drones or AI or whatever, but all of those things will be to facilitate a scenario where your side brings more men to that fight, that your men have an advantage in that fight, and that the fight actually reduces the other side's ability to do the same to you.