The future of war is bizarre and terrifying

War has always been terrifying. Read about the Mongol conquest where whole cities would be slaughtered. Or earlier about the Roman conquest of Asia Minor where likely over a million people were marched back to Roman slave markets. Or the Assyrians where enemy leaders were flayed alive and entire conquered populations were deported to far reaches of the Empire.

Also, the balance between infantry and horse archers was not as cut and dried as the article indicates but was rather a see-saw. The Roman Army with their heavy infantry legions could defeat heavy cavalry pretty routinely, especially once they figured out logistics. Once Trajan figured out how to love the columns down the Euphrates, the Roman legions destroyed the Parthian horse archers and heavy cavalry and captured the Parthian capital city.

The Chinese infantry, when there was organization, also could destroy horse cavalry. Han and Tang generals did lead armies who were victorious against large nomadic confederations with horse archers.

Even in modern times, air power has limitations in that in can’t actually hold territory, and you need actual boots on the ground.

I think drones are going to be a huge change, but likely in concert with infantry and not as something separate from it. Drones will still have issues of range and control, and perhaps having them based with an infantry unit and working in concert might actually work better than having them alone.

So the future of war is likely to be pretty similar to what it has been for the past millennia: Control the high ground. Use technology to your advantage. Deny the enemy use of territory and resources. Destroy the will of the enemy to fight.

From chariots, to cavalry, to iron weapons, to artillery, to aircraft, to drones, we can still see the pattern of new technology getting incorporated into the military structures.

What I think is worrying is the fact that we can't answer the question: "are we at war?" reliably. It's quite possible we are. And we don't know we are. What can be the consequences?

We do know that 'disinformation' runs rampant on the internet and it's becoming increasingly hard and exhausting to find the facts. There are fact-checkers but increasingly they are becoming biased and need to be fact-checked by new fact-checkers. Deepfakes are getting better and better and very soon any video can be fake without it being detectable.

Half of the populating already doesn't trust the media, and the media themselves are thriving by clicks (and thus feed fear and anger). I'm worried where this is leading.

A global industry dedicated to manufacturing a superior weapons arsenal and the largest threat will be cyberwarfare.

War always evolves to be more terrible than the last.

I wonder if we will ever get to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon (Original Star Trek series).