There are numerous examples of simple tracked vehicles armed with weapons. It does not take much imagination to see how those combined with larger drones (tanks, humvees), artillery, or aircraft could be used.
Um real warfighting isn't like anime where cute chicks in tight fitting catsuits fight with giant robots.
Tracked vehicles have the dalek problem how do you go inside a building/cave to engage the enemy - watch black hawk down how do you replace a seal team or ranger brick with robots
And any military tracked vehicle is not simple one of the main reasons that MBT's still have 4 man crews is they need the fleshy meatbags to keep the bugger running.
Here's really the root of the problem. Thousands of years ago, real warfighting consisted of men in centuries and phalanxes, piking each other to death--it wasn't sporting to, for example, ambush a legion as it marched through a forest and cut them down ("Quintili Vare, legiones redde!").
A century and a half, "real warfighting" involved massed troops lining up across from one another and firing in volleys while ignoring civilians--it wasn't sporting to, for example, raze towns and crops and destroy railroad tracks in order to demoralize the enemy.
Two decades ago, "real warfighting" involved massing mechanized infantry, achieving air superiority, and engaging regular forces until their ruler surrendered.
The problem is that this notion of "real warfighting" is constantly changing. Once upon a time, real warfighting didn't involve violating neutral national borders and airspace and dropping munitions on civilians without having clear proof of the target or its strategic value. That is clearly no longer the case, as we've seen with the drone strikes that have been carried out.
We can't ignore the probability that one day, "warfighting" will mean a text sent over IRC to an automated artillery battery to target a village and fire for effect, because the little killbots saw their one target disappear into a place with stairs.
Comments
There are numerous examples of simple tracked vehicles armed with weapons. It does not take much imagination to see how those combined with larger drones (tanks, humvees), artillery, or aircraft could be used.
Um real warfighting isn't like anime where cute chicks in tight fitting catsuits fight with giant robots.
Tracked vehicles have the dalek problem how do you go inside a building/cave to engage the enemy - watch black hawk down how do you replace a seal team or ranger brick with robots
And any military tracked vehicle is not simple one of the main reasons that MBT's still have 4 man crews is they need the fleshy meatbags to keep the bugger running.
how do you go inside a building/cave to engage the enemy
That would be where the airstrikes and artillery come in, right?
any military tracked vehicle
Think smaller, like on the order of one of the Talon defusal robots ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foster-Miller_TALON ).
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real warfighting
Here's really the root of the problem. Thousands of years ago, real warfighting consisted of men in centuries and phalanxes, piking each other to death--it wasn't sporting to, for example, ambush a legion as it marched through a forest and cut them down ("Quintili Vare, legiones redde!").
A century and a half, "real warfighting" involved massed troops lining up across from one another and firing in volleys while ignoring civilians--it wasn't sporting to, for example, raze towns and crops and destroy railroad tracks in order to demoralize the enemy.
Two decades ago, "real warfighting" involved massing mechanized infantry, achieving air superiority, and engaging regular forces until their ruler surrendered.
The problem is that this notion of "real warfighting" is constantly changing. Once upon a time, real warfighting didn't involve violating neutral national borders and airspace and dropping munitions on civilians without having clear proof of the target or its strategic value. That is clearly no longer the case, as we've seen with the drone strikes that have been carried out.
We can't ignore the probability that one day, "warfighting" will mean a text sent over IRC to an automated artillery battery to target a village and fire for effect, because the little killbots saw their one target disappear into a place with stairs.