It's hard to predict what the next outbreak of war will look like.

Are we going to see more Syria/Yemen/Sudan-type conflicts or will we get back to a conventional war with tank battles and all?

In the 20th century warfare evolved trench warfare to asymmetrical war.

You don't need divisions to make an impact, you need someone willing to set off a suicide vest in a police station, a pregnant woman to sit an a VBIED and drive past a checkpoint or someone strong enough to fire an RPG.

To assume robots or technology is going to solve those problems is probably a naive position.

It's of course important to prepare for a larger scale war against China, Russia, etc. but realistically we're more likely to be fighting a handful of goat herders in Afghanistan with an AK and a bag full of rice before we're taking on an armored division.

The best line in the article was "We can’t hope endlessly that technology will make warfare easier or less brutal or less costly, [because] The reality is, it doesn’t; it changes it. It makes it harder in many cases."

Note: I was in the US Army from 03-07 serving in the Rangers with 4 deployments and have seen ingenuity trump technology