Detecting heat via infrared will still be useful, any kind of engine gives off heat. Whether biological or mechanical.
You can construct engine that have disguise their heat signature a bit, or that have a smaller heat signature. But that severely limits their capabilities, which might be a good enough outcome for the sides that use the heat detection.
It’d be nice if all wars were basically a simulated conflict with robots fighting each other far from any humans but the defector that turns their robots on human populations will always have an advantage in actually winning wars.
Besides, these are wars of attrition where killing off the young men who fight wars is the entire point. A robot that takes a few months to manufacture instead of 18 years to raise changes the calculus entirely.
The robot could still take 18 man-years to manufacture.
War is largely about fear / intimidation. Yes, an RTS-like "destroy the assets" is how it's abstracted, but ultimately it's about intimidating a leader and population into submission. Keeping the attackers away from cities is very much part of that calculus, as is dropping long-range attacks on those cities.
If both sides have robots that take months to manufacture, the goal would still be the same: "Keep their robots away" and visa-versa "Get into their population centers and seize power symbols". At this stage, with established defenders, the goal seems to be "seize ground yard by yard"
And "outproduce them" aka "grind down their will" is still going to be a viable strategy.
The genocide was not the war. It was a "police" operation against a nearly entirely unarmed enemy.
The war was to to stop Germany from expanding past its borders, and also maybe to stop the genocide.
As I understand it, Racism was a strong motivator in the propaganda. It was part of Hitler's narrative even before he was in power (something something culture destroyers something something parasites lorem ipsum)
Only recently have I noticed that some groups support a Theory that downplays racism because people are obediently blind. I have seen racism and xenophobia and know it is neither obedience nor blind. But as to the extend of the power it held in the Germany of 1930, I have only read about it.
Hitler had delusions about "Aryan" race, white blond people, even though he was not blond. Also, the war was mostly fought in Europe (or at least started in), i.e. mostly among people of the same race.
It couldn't have been "xenophobia" either, given he wasn't even German!
A lot of people who were sent to the concentration camps, besides Jews, were Roma (Gypsies), gays [1], Slavic people, probably more.
I havne't studied history that deeply, maybe this talk about "undesirables" was all just propaganda, conveniently constructed to help fulfill military goals, but it's clearly far from neatly fitting "racism / xenophobia".
Of course this kind of scenario was the fantasy outcome of the lightning win over and occupation of Iraq, with "thunder runs" and such, but in the longer term it didn't work out that way.
Most wars today don't occur in trenches in the middle of nowhere. Actually the most recent thing I can think of is medieval battlefields but even then a major component of warfare were sieges which targeted entire cities because it didn't make sense to have your military fortress out in the sticks where it was easy to cut off the supply lines. Even World War 1 doesn't count because the "middle of nowhere" where the trenches were were often only uninhabited because of the war.
That said, we won't see wars of Terminator-style killing machines pitted against each other just like we don't see genuine tank-on-tank duels anymore. It's far cheaper to put some explosives on a UAV and call it a day. Any evenly matched war between nations capable of producing battle robots is likely one between nations with access to nuclear bombs. If Indian border conflicts are any indication, those wars are more likely to be fought with literal sticks to avoid any action that could trigger a nuclear first strike.
I think we will now have asymmetric wars.
Africa doesn't count because those countries don't have nuclear bombs
The Russo-Ukrainian war seems pretty serious.
> The loser would go nuclear.
If annihilation was viewed better than even unconditional surrender, unconditional surrender would never have happened in the past. But it has, and thus if there is a credible marginal threat of nuclear retaliation for a nuclear strike, there is very good reason to suspect that the loser in major convential war would not go nuclear. The risk of nuclear escalation of course impacts the calculus of war involving one or more nuclear powers, but a firm statement that “the loser will go nuclear” does not seem justified, except perhaps in the case where the otherwise winning side is not, and would not (at least in the perception of the losing nuclear power) in the event of nuclear attack be protected by, a nuclear power.
> Africa doesn't count because those countries don't have nuclear bombs
The vast majority of non-African countries also don't have nuclear bombs.
it depends if loss will be significant enough to justify mutual annihilation. Assume Russia attacked Finland, and NATO started military operation and lost. It will be very unlikely France, Brits and Americans will launch nukes for Finland loss.
Instead of "serious" I wanted to say "With serious possibility of escalation" I mentioned Asymmetric conflicts, as the two conflicts occupying our international News (Gaza & Ukraine) are good examples
I don't have any foundation to have an opinion on an invasion to Finland. I would expect there was a possibility of escalation as that is the only purpose of belonging to NATO. I would expect nobody to escalate over a Taiwan Invasion.
I think China won't seriously threaten Indian borders, just based on having nuclear weapons or not. (An opinion hanging of a spider threat)
there is semiconductor industry on the table. I think there is high chance NATO will be suppressing invasion forces through launching anti ship missiles from aircrafts and cruisers as well as secretly supplying them to Taiwan.
I'm sure there was a plot or something too
Edit: and not everyone will have robots.
It's not pretty, but war never is. I am surprised at how people today can point at a war and be surprised that atrocities happen. World Wars, Korea, Vietnam let alone the immediate history of Israel. Serbia and Croatia anyone?
It's not like we don't have plenty of historical sources. War is bad business and trying to claim that "civilians" should be exempt is not fooling anyone who's had even a precursory glance over such material.
This kinda plays out already - where not every "side" has a military or soldiers, so the battle is fought between soldiers and "civilians".
Any battle between a state with drone invading forces and one without, is going to be indistinguishable from an invading robot army indiscriminately killing all the civilians.
It could mean no revolution happens ever again and the currently established dictatorships stay as they are forever.
For example, Adolf Hitler was toppled by losing a war.
East Germany was toppled (partially) because their economy was broke, not because of lack of face recognition.
> [...] the currently established dictatorships stay as they are forever.
Stalin was toppled by death. There was still a dictatorship after him, but it did not stays as it was under Stalin.
See also PR China under Mao and under Deng Xiaoping. Very different regimes.
But it seems to me, that it's going to be impossible to revolt against a party who controls an obedient killbot army.
Hitler was a special case, since he played the dumb world domination game.