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If you want to go trench by trench or door by door go ahead.
The future of war is not dirt. But instead information.
If Australian warnings for Perl Harbor had been heeded we wouldn't have had to build so many boats. We built 9000 boats in WWII and we'll build more than that many drones in WWIII.
But what good are drones without information? Without targets? Without information what to they do?
Targets, tactics is only one kind of information. Real time surveillance, biometrics, the ability to strike command and control. To cut the head off the snake is worth more than clearing a city.
If you need to clear a city, you need infantry.
Did we go island hoping all the way to Japan and then go door to door? Or did we break the enemies will to fight and force a surrender?
Is it always worth going door to door and holding worthless land? Trading bodies and bullets for what? Dirt?
What would it be worth however to cripple the enemies Command, Control, Communication, Computers, Cyber, and Intelligence? Do we really need to take land in future wars as much as force a surrender out of idiots that want to start shit.
There's a terrific documentary about how the Air Force planned to win a nuclear war before ICBMs. It's called the power of decision. It's not about going door to door or trench by trench however. It's about a different kind of war where you win by removing your enemies ability to fight in a flash. Unfortunately similar can be done today in cyberspace without the assurance of MAD or the early warning of an ICMB launch.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?426926-1/the-power-decision#
Okay. Why didn't the US "cripple the enemies Command, Control, Communication, Computers, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillaince and Recu" in Afghanistan and Iraq and end the war in five minutes? Oh wait, we basically did. And then fought against guerillas for twenty years.
Okay, why didn't russia do that in Ukraine? Oh yeah, they tried. The opening hours of the war involved paratrooper attacks on key airfields coupled with ballistic missile strikes against fortifications. They failed, lost a LOT of their actually competent soldiers, and then had to deal with overextended supply lines.
And yeah, russia are fucking incompetent. But even the US can fail at a mission objective. And, unless you are willing to switch to nukes immediately after, means you are now in a "real" war.
Ukraine "changed everything" except... it didn't, really. A lot of this has been known and is the basis for a lot of the (often times batshit insane) strategies and plans of The Cold War. It is just that West Point and similar analysts love to push along topics that lead to increased spending toward the military industrial complex. And... I shouldn't have to explain why...
And the fancy guns ARE incredibly useful. If a war can be "won" without fighting it, all the better. But that has not been the indication of the past century and the reality is: When you run out of the fancy stuff, you are back to boots on the ground.
But stuff like the M5* and (arguably) the new APC everyone hates are very much showing the realization of this. Part of it is realizing that people just don't want to be in a standing military anymore if it means they might get shot at. But it is also acknowledging the reality of what a "real" war will be.
*: I lack the expertise to properly explain it, but even the switch to the 6.8 round is this. At a high level, the 6.8 round is less about body armor and is more about doctrine. Because even top of the line "Jack Bauer is gonna murder some fools for shooting his girlfriend" body armor is not going to have you shrugging off a 5.56 round to the chest. It might not kill or even wound, but it will take someone out of the fight long enough to capitalize. It is more about making every shot count and changing doctrine from highly skilled techniques like suppressive fire (knowing where to shoot rather than just aiming at the head when it pops out) and bounding advances/leap frogging. Which hearkens back to the days of "Well, most of them can't hit the broad side of a barn. But when they do, things die"
In both those wars there was a plan for war. But not a plan for peace.
The civilian leadership in Iraq made a choice to send the Iraqi military home with no pay and no plan to do anything but hold up in the green zone as if everything after opening up the war would just turn to roses.
The civilian leadership refused the military leadership's requests to negotiate with the Iraqi religious leaders calling for violence. To create a plan for peace.
These guns your jerking off over did not bring peace. Nor could they win a war. All they did was create a stalemate.
To plan for peace is a tiny bit harder than telling a few young men to leave the FOB every once in awhile. It involves negotiating with religion, creating win/wins, making sure people have the means to support themselves. Or crushing those that oppose the system. It's easier if you get the locals to do it for you in exchange for reconstruction for instance in Germany and Japan.
There small local conflicts you're describing are in places with a long history of tribes fighting other tribes. They are used to that. WWIII will be a flash point conflict among civilians that may not stomach a prolonged conflict and will be more likely to want to negotiate peace.
If coolers heads prevail then peace is possible. If shareholders just want a war that drags on far away and civilian leaders ignore military leadership you end up with the wast of time and money Iraqi and Afghanistan were. The difference is the endgame of politics. Why did the war continue after Osama was caught and killed? What was the objective after that? Why was holding the dirt so important after the enemy had been reduced to a point that could no longer project power behind their hill of dirt?
If getting Osama was the main goal why did we ignore all the Intel that he was across the border in Pakistan for so long? Why did we keep searching where we knew Osama wasn't? Because Halliburton wanted a prolonged war and the military leadership had no authority to stop the madness, win the war, negotiate peace, and move on after the mission of taking out the terrorist leader Osama was complete. So instead it devolved into holding a hill of dirt for no reason except to line pockets.