How does war look like if the offensive tech is far stronger/better than the defensive tech?

This nigga gets it.

Modern warfare is yesterday's warfare, because if we break out the actual modern innovations, we'll run out of people and terrain to fight wars on.

With cobalt you can create "salted nukes" that shorten the half-life of nuclear fallout from tenthousands of years to decades. Which means that the radiation that normally is expelled over thousands of years now gets pumped out in a few years. We can completely sterilize the earth today so only subterranean life and deep sea life will survive. We have the technology.

Napoleonics, WWI, modern warfare all fit. Take your pick

Basically it's when even your generals say "forget the armor" and cutie also get buildings shredded by warfare. Fun blips pop up though. The infamous ocean stalemate of the first two steel vessels in the American Civil war, trenches with defensive machine gun emplacements showed down forward offensive momentum in the great war.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War

>completely sterilize the earth today
Unlikely. The Earth has recovered multiple extinction events in its history where up to 90% of ALL life were destroyed. Nukes pale in comparison. The radiation might even spur accelerated evolution through higher mutations.

This^

We have automatic grenade launchers, Predator drones,StS missile systems, Thermal targeting systems, bunker busting warheads, Hyper sonic attack craft that travel in near orbit and Rail guns that can strike targets 220nm away in less than 8 secs of response time.

Really the only defense people have to try to counter it are using human shields to generate negative publicity when these weapons are used. It's also getting harder to do because technology just keeps improving precision.

Striking from beyond the horizon and annihilation of thousands of men at a time means that you need to work in small groups separated over longer distances and a complex intelligence network to hide your location at any given time.

You attack first.

I.e. guerrilla tactics and terrorist cells.

The war of nations is over since the cold war. Now we have groups supported by nations against nations.

This. The premise of OP's question is fundamentally flawed.

Destructivity has increased, not precision.

m8 what.
Our weapons are as precise as can be, lightyears ahead of what we had during WW2 or the Cold War.

The only theoretical offense-trumps-all situation I can think of is interplanetary war fought with nuclear/antimatter pumped xray/gamma ray lasers. In a war like that (where stealth is also impossible because lol space) it all comes down to production and timing.

>stealth is also impossible because lol space
What?

A spacecraft that is anything but an inert rock will invariably emit shitloads of IR radiation, making it show up like a bright shining beacon against the background of interstellar space to any sensor.

Do you think real life is comics mate?

You can directional emit IR.

Until you figure out some technobabble totally not magic space engines, the way to get going anywhere in space is to point a big fucking jet blast in the other direction. This will also be a big fucking light source, visible to anyone who cares to look. By analysing the spectrum, luminosity, and motion of that they can tell your exact position, velocity and acceleration.

With that big engine shut off on the other hand, the only thing with a major influence on your velocity is the gravitational pull of major celestial bodies, something that will be well known to everyone around.

So whenever you change direction you tell the world all about it, and when you aren't it's trivial to calculate your position at any point in time with enough precision for terminal guidance systems and large yield nuclear warheads to do the rest.

you have no idea what you are talking about.

Not to mention the waste heat from light support, sensors etc. on board the ship. radiating all that directionally away from the supposed location of the enemy makes for some huge issues with radiator construction

life support*

?

You can still see the bits around the screen and infer position.

You would have to have detectors there, but yes. You can make the reflector cover more of the solid angle around the ship. You will have to have some exposed solid angle where radiation is emitted so the ship doesn't melt. You do not have to be a light bulb in space. You can be a flashlight pointing away from your most probably observers.

>Machineguns in the early 20th century
>offensive

The American Civil War.

I think he does, maybe in the African and parts of the Pacific front it was that way, but the European front was a standstill. Hitler got an early lead due to the blitzkrieg tactic.
As for the situation OP is talking about, I'd say that does fit modern warfare pretty well, especially Vietnam era. To answer OP's question, the best defense against a technologically superior enemy, or any superior enemy really, is guerilla warfare. Hit and run tactics assure the maximum effect from small/weak forces. That fits perfectly well with the tactics used by insurgents in the Middle East.

No.
WW2 is tilted in offense. Which is half the reason bomb raids and blitzkreig is keywords.
Another keyword is bunkers: In WW2, bombs where unable to properly penetrate most things, meaning bunkers was the state of the art bomb security, so guess what happened: Factory bunkers, extra armored roofs, bomb shelters(2 floors + basement with reinforced fundation), and bonus: Fuhrerbunkern.

>Modern warfare
There hasn't really been modern warfare. There has been psuedo feudal African states doing stuff, Jews fighting enemies 2 entire tech tiers below them, Russia Fun Wars, and Americas last ~75 years of hardcore proxy warfare with little to no commitment or plan.
Even something like Korea and Vietnam was still proxy warfare, with things like Nuclear Armaments and Cruise Missiles not being used as primary weapons to ensure strategic victory.

WW1 became a stalemate in the western front, because by the time people figured out how to warfare 1910s edition: Trenches and defensive positions where set up. And even by WW2 standards, well entrenched positions was still extremely good.
Meanwhile on Eastern front, shit happened, because nobody has dug as many trenches.

>There hasn't really been modern warfare.
There was in the ukraine

greater emphasis on getting in the first shot, likely a massive increase in emphasis on sensor and sensor countermeasures.

probably a significant increase in friendly fire incidents as RoE would likely change to include shooting to kill on any target that enters range and isnt positively identified as a friendly

The Yom Kippur War was fought against enemies that had comparative tech and Egypt actually had Soviet pilots and air defense crews taking part.

We have a logistic chain that is:
0. Factory to produce all equipment
1. Satellite scanning
2. Computer scanning confirmed by technicians
3. Radio communication, forwarding
4. A base 200-300km away
5. Ability to forward troops, shoot missiles, at target
You might think thats good, but thats still 5 steps of logistics to even attempt to fire a missile. Each of those steps can be subverted, sabotaged, or infiltrated.

>Russia is sending unmarked troops sir
>>Well, do we follow the Geneva convention, and just hang them? And then secure the bomber, and then shot any non marked plains?
>No sir, we should do fuck all. And then let them spread, and eventually take Crimea
And then Warfare continued, by meek will and prayers of Russia actually invading, in hopes of NATO respending.

this is what a man speaking from his anus looks like.

You get war. Since man first picked up a club or rock and smashed anothers head the technology of murdering has steadily been ahead of the technology of not being murdered.

Even the great example people might bring up, ww1, made assaults difficult because you could kill so many without any good way of preventing it.

So since we can choose from any time period I nominate Pike & shot.

The main problem with WWI was that the defensive *options* (Digging a trench, staying in it.) were near to on-par with the offensive primaries (inaccurate artillery by 10s of meters, early machine guns) but vulnerable to offensive secondaries (mustard gas, remarkably accurate artillery).

you are a complete idiot.
Modern ballistics are *massively* more accurate than the crap we were working with in WW2, Vietnam, even desert storm. Hell, a Hellfire missile is only 64" long, weigns a spritely 100 pounds, and guided by an incredible laser homin millimeter wave seeker that can chase a dot harder than every housecat in America. Compare that to - fuck, pick a dick - the AGM-122 Sidearm. We used that fucker clear up to 1990.
That's a cozy 9' in length and almost 200 pounds, and you know what, it was guided by a narrow-band radar-seeker, which meant it could only home in on a target *that was emitting a radar signal*, otherwise, fucker was borderline dumbfire. "goes in a straight line" is not ideal when it comes to solid fuel rocketry.

Check out Fukushima's boar population, and the wolves of Chernobyl. Both are healthy, growing populations that are being studied for potential mutations. We're not talking about "Adamantium skeleton" mutations, but more "Resistant to radiation" mutations.

There is literally no way for us to sterilise earth.

It sorta is. But its hampered by being Six Day War: Volume 2.
And neither side deployed anything to stop the enemies war production, in hopes of scarcity of deployed arms.

True, which was actually a bad thing: Soviet tank instructors taught the Egyptian military that the way to fight was to drive, come to a complete stop, then fire, then drive more.

The israeli were smart enough to follow that FPS rule, "Never stand still".

I think he was using the phrase as hyperbole. but then again, this is Veeky Forums...

also: yeah, water bears would survive.

a series of seemingly random bunker busting warheads being fired from miles off by completely unmanned drones, until one side runs out of people who know how to make and repair drones.

The Highway of Death is what happens when modern weapons shoot things that can't defend against them.

Emphasis on not getting hit at all. Armour takes a back seat to speed and maneuverability.

Greater R&D placed into weapon accuracy. Bonus points if you can fire it while moving.

I'm mostly thinking in terms of tanks here, since we associate them the most with balancing offence and defence.

Go read a Starfist novel. The weapons are so powerful that you just have to hope you don't get hit. Additionally tanks are obsolete because AT weapons are too good.

>Soviet tank instructors taught the Egyptian military that the way to fight was to drive, come to a complete stop, then fire, then drive more.

That's because they were working with stabilisation systems that could not be relied upon to accurately train the gun whilst moving, let alone by crews of limited training.

Hell it was standard practice for everyone with the generation of tanks the Egyptians were using to do that, not just the Russians.