The army was going to be reduced by a factor of 100, and two tiny armies were going to face off while the majority of men of fighting age were going to sit at home and paint landscape paintings? Really?
> that it would, to a large extent supersede the necessity of large armies, and consequently, exposure to battle and disease [would] be greatly diminished.
Our force structure shifted towards logistics and infrastructure from combatants as we moved up the weapon complexity hierarchy. First automatic guns, then tanks, then airplanes.
To a large extent, a tank or air crew is 50 guys waving off 1-5, while they sit back at base and do hobbies between bouts of mechanic labor. They’re not literally at home, but we do fight with small mechanized armies while most soldiers watch on from the base.
It wasn’t over night but it did exactly what it intended and sped up a battle significantly as though you had multiples of troops compared to a musket firing line
Then miniaturized it becomes the SAW
16% of adult males in the Roman mid-republic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_army_of_the_mid-Republic...), call that 8% of adults of all genders.
Wikipedia says that there's about 1.34 million people in active duty in the US military, out of about 342 million people, 21.5% of which are under 18. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Armed_Forces)
I think that's 0.5%? Down from 8% in ancient Rome?
Even including Aative + reserves + paramilitaries, less than 2% of Iranian adults are in the military.
At this point, I'm actually not sure if you're trolling or unironically don't get it?
Probably none at all.
So how might a global and region powers engage in a war without engaging in territorial invasion? What kind of advancement might allow such a conflict to take place with only a tiny number of combatants?
>The army was going to be reduced by a factor of 100, and two tiny armies were going to face off while the majority of men of fighting age were going to sit at home and paint landscape paintings? Really?
Well, for a time greek city states did fight pretty much like this. Small armies of hoplites were raised outside harvest season, went out, fought almost show-battles with very few casualties, and tribute changed hands based on the results. Everyone went home for the harvest.
I believe there's even instances where a battle wasn't fought at all in favour of two appointed champions dueling (origin of the popular fiction trope)
It didn't last, but for a time the greek city states had a kind of equilibrium with relatively few resources (or people) spent on war.
This is a view held by a small group, but is in no way the accepted view of it for historians. See the link for a blogpost of a military historian talking about the orthodox and heterodox schools of thought on this.
https://acoup.blog/2025/11/14/collections-hoplite-wars-part-...