What will modern warfare be like?

After a while thinking about this i believe that a large focus for wars will be based upon the mind itself.

Future war will be far too costly to be fought with militaries. Instead, future war will be 'ecnomic wars'. If you can imagine that.

lol. this is modern warfare

Originally posted by Iknowthelies
In the future will wars still be fought by infantry or will technology replace all humans on the battlefront.

Will wars be waged entirely in computer systems, imagine that crippling an entire nation with one virus.

What do you guys think future wars will be like. I know i haven't specified how far in the futureI'm talking about. So let your imagination run wild

[edit on 23-11-2004 by Iknowthelies]

Sticks and stones probably!

Well, we can't be all THAT stupid... Since the invention of the atomic bomb, humanity has used the weapon against itself ONE TIME. That was 60 or so years ago. We survived the Cold War without a single bomb drop, and the Cold War is arguably the high water mark of human stupidity, arrogance, and childishness.

On the one hand, we all have a constant feeling of "something's gotta give," but on the other hand, we must remember that as humans on Earth, we are just a collective of selfish individuals scrambling to get a warm meal and a warm bed, and to make each other laugh and love. We're not as dog-assed about war as we make ourselves out to be.

The struggle for material posessions will wax and wane as it always has. A big change will probably occur in our transportation systems when the price of oil finally forgets how to drop, but that won't be so bad. We'll figure something out. I don't see any Terminator 3 or Mad Max happenings in our future, really.

Zip

i dont think that we are going to anahilate ourselves any time soon,(then again i may be wrong ) but you have to remember that since the first tool was invented we have been figuring out new and more efecint ways and inventing new wepons to kill each other with and the is allways some one who has to see how efctive it is so i gues in the future we will stilll be doing the same thing.

I fear today's nerd who spends his whole life playing videogames will be tomorrows Medal of Honor recipient *pukes*

We will probably be in the terminator robot age in no time, this will give new meaning to the term an "Arm chair General".

lol that is probably not true but anays

After viewing the terrible destruction capabilities of atomic weapons Einstine said "I dont know what weapons ww3 will be fought with but ww4 will be fought with sticks and stones." I think he was right,we havent been in an all out war since ww2 where nuke use was needed to win and when we were (Korea) we tucked tail and ran.

A large part of warfare will be in the cyber realm. With the capability to have soft kills, the crippling of infrastructure by cyber intrusions, the need for such shock and awe tactics will decrease to some extent.

Military forces will be smaller and more efficient with better communication and front line intelligence will allow the smaller forces of troops to take maneuver warfare to the next level. Their ace in the hole being precision air support and artillery fire that allows them to engage and defeat much larger forces or engage in combat with insurgent forces.

Gone is the days of massive force on force warfare such as WW2. Tanks even seem to be becoming less useful as lighter more mobile combat vehicles that are more fuel efficient and capable of both carrying and supporting troops are used. Enemy armor can now be defeated with air power that will likely become increasingly unmanned as time goes on.

Everything points to lighter more mobile forces with greater self sufficiency to reduce logistic requirements. I wouldn't be surprised if traditional heavy artillery units are gradually faded away for more mobile variants that will travel with the troops they support.

Take it or leave it but that's what I think based on current trends.

Going by what the smart munition revolution going on in U.S. engagements tells us is that intelligence is king. If your location is known and your enemy wants you dead, chances are there is some smart munition on it's way as we speak. Smaller and smaller munitions will lead to less collateral damage and I think we've already seen inert, concrete filled munitions used on sensitive targets.

I think a lot of things will end up underground for this reason but I can't foresee all the consequences of these development on the next conflict.