With the advancement of drones, both air and ground, what will be the future of infantry? At this point they are essentially glorified forward observers. They still have value in highly nuisanced Ops, like COIN ops, where there is a large civilian contingent in the crossfire. Eventually FO ops will be completely taken over by machines, and pretty soon. I envision a furture where the infantry is mostly tasked with psyops and civil affairs type missions.
Thoughts?
>At this point they are essentially glorified forward observers.
Not really. Just like eveyone sperged out on "there will never be a tank battle ever again" - and now look at the Ukrainian war.
Same with infantry - it's versatility is why I do not see it ever really going away - at the very least as a plan B if the machine FO system is disabled (have a look at electronic warfare in the same Ukraine war).
There are many areas in the world where drones are very ineffective, especially agaisnt guerrilla groups, who will continue to be the most prominant threat for the next century
You need infantry to take strategic positions without massive collateral damage, to fight in urban areas and to police populations. Infantry will be reduced in overall functions but still retain roles which other combat arms cannot fulfill.
Drone technology is still in its infancy and will only get much better. I'm talking about the future.
Machines are still not capable of thinking and making judgement calls like a human so the infantry will be more focused on unconventional COIN ops that involve attempting to spare and win the favor of the local populace.
Because unthinking pleb cunts equate shitsurgencies and asymmetric warfare with "HURR DEMISE OF THE CONVENTIONAL MILITRY"
>Because unthinking pleb cunts
It's always been that way, and always will be.
As the world becomes more urbanized, there is a growing need for MORE skilled infantry, not less. Technology can augment infantry, but it can't replace it, because humans are always evolving and adapting. If you send machines into an area, people will analyze them, and figure out ways to either block or defeat them. That's just what people do. It's always harder to adapt to a thinking human. Always.
Until governments decide to quit worrying about "collateral damage" and just bomb their enemies into extinction, there will always be a need for a thinking man on the ground, skilled at, and willing to perform, small unit infantry tasks.
Its inevitable that deploying military robotics will be banned and considered a crime against humanity via a treaty.
Exo-skeletons aren't that far away.
Not Veeky Forums related, try /int/ or /k/
That will be prohibitively expensive.
Technological advancements have always been and always be force multipliers, good old ground pounders will always be around.
Seems to me that in urban combat and occupations you will always need infantry. Unless we get those call of duty style hover drones that can float through hallways and whatnot. Even then infantry will be pretty crucial in locking down and clearing buildings.
Also I see no reason why anti drone technology won't advance just as fast as drone technology. tanks were unbeatable till they invented rocket launchers
At first, yeah. It will become less over time.
All that fucking stallone dredd looking shit and they can't be arsed to give him a laser gun. It's a damn shame.
This is a /k/ topic, right?
Have you seen the fucking US military?
The United States launched 59 Tomahawk Cruise Missiles at a Syrian airstrip. Each missive costs around 1.7 MILLION DOLLARS. Price isn't an issue.
>even with the advent of military exosuits and sci-fi killdroids many decades in the future the standard issue rifle of the US military will be some variant of the M16/A15
Probably the most accurate part of the infograph.
/k/ is more about weapons, ain't it? Like fucking rednecks talking about muh cool guns?
Read Who would sign such a treaty? Robotics literally save human lives by removing humans out of combat situations.
Basically, we will see a devolution in the scale and size of infantry formations. The division is already an effectively obsolete unit on the modern battle field, with the US military beginning with Gulf War 2 to opt to utilize brigade-sized units to carry out combat operations with divisions sticking around more due to tradition than any practical use. Advancements in military technology are contributing to a maximization of the combat potential and capabilities of small units -- why send in and risk a company of infantry when a platoon or perhaps even a squad with sufficiently advanced and responsive support could carry out the same job? In modern war, speed is key. The more troops you field, the greater the logistical strain, the slower the collective unit response time, and the greater potential for casualties and general fuck-ups. The survivability of the infantryman is becoming of greater importance as well. The greatest contributor to failure of military operations since the end of WW2 has been due to loss of public opinion, and in a world of instantly available 24/7 news all it takes is a few dead GI's to sour public opinion.
tl;dr: Infantry units will become smaller and supplemented with more hardware to maximize combat effectiveness and survivabilty
Clearing out old stock is what that was...
There is a such thing as being over-geared. All that gear and tech can look cool, but too much can actually get in the way, and be a general pain in the ass. The human element will not completely go away anytime soon, but the mission will change drastically to becoming exclusively specOps type stuff.
>tanks were unbeatable till they invented rocket launchers
What are anti-TANK guns and other tanks?
Some of /k/ is rednecks and guns, and then there's some other bits like enlistment generals and they often have discussions about tanks, tactics (like OP's question), Syria, etc
t. /k/ regular browser
one cheap AC round from a cheap high calibur rifle and that $2 million soldier is thrown into the dirt.
>divisions sticking around more due to tradition than any practical use.
That's not true at all. The U.S. army tried to piecemeal combat commands, and operations, in Iraq and A-stan, and it was a giant clusterfuck. The army likes to pretend it's "one team, one fight", but nothing could be further from the truth because the low standards that some army units keep are fucking criminal, and that goes at every level from private to brigade commander. Shitty commanders create shitty units, and all they do is drag down the units that actually give a fuck. A division, as an organic formation, allows for a more uniform standard of performance than do separate combat brigades, and while that uniform standard can be bad, it can also be better.
>The more troops you field, the greater the logistical strain
Yes, and no. The more non-combat troops you field, the greater the logistical strain, as they don't do shit outside of logistical tasks and non-combat operations. However, eliminate the majority of those non-combat troops and add their numbers to infantry units, and the infantry can essentially support itself using a rotational support schedule of combat / recovery / support. This allows for troops to be rotated off the line in order to prevent stress overload and exhaustion. The best support I ever got was from my fellow grunts, and the most worthless pieces of shit I encountered were the REMF fobbit toads that sat on their ass behind a computer in air conditioning.
>Infantry units will become smaller and supplemented with more hardware to maximize combat effectiveness and survivabilty
That's possible, but there are some tasks, like isolate, secure, defend, that are just manpower intensive no matter the tech.
I would have loved to have had a decent drone I could have deployed, or a remote device I could have used to send into buildings, but even if I did, I still would have needed the same amount of dudes, and more, for operations.
>>AC round
They don't make Auto Cannon rounds for "cheap high caliber rifles". And the soldier on the right would be essentially immune to most small arms fire and would probably have a great deal of protection against MMGs and HMGs.
just takes one .57 cal bullet and one of these soviet surplus sticks that have been sprinkled all over the world to remove $2m. it's not practical.
>Just like eveyone sperged out on "there will never be a tank battle ever again" - and now look at the Ukrainian war.
... A war between two sides that are both using backasswards soviet-era weaponry?
How many of Americas enemies have used tanks against American troops since the Gulf War?
Just proves my point if that's true. If we're spending so much on defense that we need to fire millions of dollars of missiles to "clear out old stock" then we can afford exoskeletons. The technology isn't there yet though.
a 5.56 fired at close range is gonna drop a soldier worth $20,000, plus the accumulated cost of his wages and employment benefits.
Really now, why do we bother using things that are killable? Or destructible, for that matter?
>>not practical
What's not practical is expecting a weapon like that to replace things like assault rifles, and machine guns. The only thing your sniper will do when facing off against riflemen equipped with power armor is die, unless he is lucky and manages to cause one or two casualties before being ventilated.
that's an anti-materiel rifle
you're also implying the "sniper" is outnumbered, as if isn't cheaper to outfit a group of men with those than literal spacemarine POWA ARMOR
There are counter sniper equipment in circulation like gunshot audio detectors, which can triangulate the sound of a shot and estimate the location of a sniper.
With exoskeletons, you can also equip more soldiers with "smart" weapons such as counter defilade grenade launchers, which can fire airburst munitions programmed to explode at a certain distance, defeating cover.
Anyways, if it was so practical to spam antimaterial rifle equipped snipers against americans, why hasn't anyone done so?
Every armed nation and dipshit militia like ISIS are still rolling with various intermediate cartridge rifles and the occasional MG and marksman rifle. I'd be more concerned with EFP's and such.