After reading a very interesting post from the Man of Tin, and an equally interesting comments section, I was pondering what the actual future of warfare might look like. Article and comments here:
As stated in the comments of the above article, most sci-fi wargames are WW2+, maybe because a lot of rules writers were familiar with WW2, maybe because the extremely influential Star Wars was WW2 in space. Maybe because WW2 is something most people can get their heads around.
The war in Ukraine seems like it has changed the face of warfare, and it seems very likely that warfare in the 21st century and possibly beyond will be heavily drone based. I think I’ve mentioned it before but the days of the tank seem numbered, at least tanks in their current form. They seem too slow and too vulnerable.
I semi-frequently get in games of Bolt Action and I wonder, if one side were allowed a modern anti-tank weapon like a Javelin, how quickly the other side’s tanks would be flaming wrecks.
Maybe something much faster and lighter is the way forward, but how much faster and lighter do you need to be to outrun a drone?
Maybe warfare in 100 years time will be completely beyond our current imaginations, let alone war within 1000 years, 10,000 or even 40,000! I don’t think many people in the 1920s would accurately predict where warfare is at today. But that doesn’t need to stop us having fun making most likely poor predictions…
So over the next 100 years…
Drones rule the day, and continue to rule the day to the point that developed nations start having smaller and smaller numbers of military personnel. Special Forces may still be deployed in limited numbers when a situation requires, or there may be the use of public relations troops to give a human face to the drones dealing with your local insurgency, but for the majority of the time, the safest and easiest solution is to never put boots on the ground.
I doubt humanoid robots/drones ever make it to the battlefield, there’s simply no benefit to them when drones are capable of flying anywhere, a humanoid drone would be just as vulnerable as a human, and they not doubt would cost far more to produce.
There’s a far greater emphasis on cyber warfare, and maybe physical wars are dropped almost entirely (what a dream). The AI race is on or over, since everyone knows the first to the top will dominate the rest.
Although I’m not sure that drones and AI will make for the most entertaining tabletop wars… no big stompy robots, laser guns, or power armour necessary.
What happens then?
Utilising nano technology I wouldn’t be surprised if drones initially look like flocks of birds, then swarms of insects, until eventually you’re looking at a cloud of sentient gas. That’s a terrifying thought.
I suppose also over time, as we become more integrated with our own technology as a species cyber warfare would become more deadly. You could hack a persons nervous system in the same way you hack a computer. Right now we have phones connecting us to the internet, the future is likely going to be about surgical implants, until eventually utilising genetic engineering we might have code added to our DNA to allow all newborns to grow a new organ that gives them access to whatever the internet is a thousand years from now. Without the ability to disconnect and with reality augmented by ancient code, code that exists for those future humans in the same way that the laws of physics do for us now, will people even remember there was a point in time that code didn’t exist?
Am I making an argument for midi-chlorians?
Will humans be those sentient gas clouds?
What if all (genuine) paranormal experiences are just contact with future humans?
Will everything, 40,000 years from now be so far removed from where we are today that if we should jump that far forwards we wouldn’t even recognise the universe, or even think it’s the same universe? Orcs, Dragons and Necromancers? Sufficiently advanced tech does look like magic right?
The next leap in the computer age, the precipice we seem all too close to, the dawning of true AI will certainly shake things up in ways I doubt we can imagine.
Or maybe we’re due a new ‘dark age’ where all the tech fails us. That’s the 40k explanation, and kind of how where I got to the current state of things in my own Deathzap setting, along with countless other ‘Grimdark’ settings.
Thoughts?
Deathzap 
It becomes more confusing when one considers counter measures. In WW2 subs were countered with death charges that evened things up a bit.
Currently US navy ships are being armed with lasers and rail guns that can shoot down missiles and drones. Will they be enough?
I suppose the most ‘entertaining’ futuristic situations are the ones where technology has been partially lost and is gradually being regained or it is held onto by some powerful individuals such as Ming the Merciless. Something similar was in the John Carter of Mars series where warriors had swords and guns as well as flying vehicles.
I often wonder about war inside spaceships and space habitats. Could projectile and ray weapons be used without breaching the hulls or would the hulls be proofed against such events or weapons kept underpowered, or would warriors be back to using swords?
You do have the issue that AI or whatever may actually be the end of drones, cancelling each other out?
On board space ships is a brain twister, you’d have to assume that whatever personal protection crew and invaders have are also weak enough for whatever weapons are in use to be effective against. But if that’s simply not possible due to developments in personal protection – power armour and energy shields. You might even see grappling and wrestling be the optimal way to fight on board ships.
I’ve only just realised how dangerous it was to have Luke training with a light sabre on board the Millennium Falcon now… had he dropped it!
We’re definitely going to be giving the drones AI. Maybe we’ll have to shut things down at that point.
Although I’d put money on the AI controlled drones being no actual threat to us, it’s just our own paranoia that makes things take a turn.
Mark Man of TIN’s comment: Some interesting speculation on the next 38K years of warfare and (alternatives to) grimdark. I think I’m going to keep space boots on the ground rather than trying to work out rules which incorporate drone warfare and sentient gas clouds of drones … drones are a bit too now / recent / modern for me.
I always appreciated Star Guard’s take on drones, which is that both sides essentially cancel each other out so don’t worry about it. Much like Bolt Action’s approach to grenades.
They may go round looking frantically for Nazi stormtroopers because that’s what their scouring of the internet tells them is the greatest threat. Could be a bad time to drive anything that looks like a Tiger 1 🙂