I'm uncertain exactly what the next major war will be like or who the sides will be, but I was thinking of a war like Syria but in a developed country. Perhaps you'd have Jesusland vs. Union of Socialist States of America vs. the Neoconfederacy vs. Ecotopia vs. The Reconquista vs. Sovereign Citizens vs. drug cartels vs. Steel Glory vs. Greater Canada against the backdrop of Central American refugees in North America. Or Cosmopolitan London vs. Hail Britannia vs. Neo-Luddites vs. Scotland vs. Ireland in the British Isles. Or whatever the fissures are in Russia or China.
One observation about the Syrian Civil War (and Iraq and Afghanistan) is that large areas of the country became extremely dangerous, because everyone was fighting over them and you often couldn't see the adversary or know who you were fighting. Another is that supply lines were quite vulnerable; forces could hole up in a military base and be relatively safe, but to continue operations in the field, they needed food/ammo/fuel, all of which needed to be transported at significant risk. A third was that whichever force brought security to a region and stopped the fighting there often won political power, because a majority of people don't care who rules them, they just want to not die.
Drones + self-driving supply lines would allow a belligerent to fortify & disperse their own industrial and operations base, well out of contested zones, and then project power at zero risk to their own lives into disputed areas. If the drones are smart enough (i.e. minimize civilian casualties but can easily detect and eliminate belligerents), they're also likely to win political points for eliminating combatants.
I dearly hope that the Western cultural fractures don't turn into this.
In any case, this is unlikely to spell victory for the belligerent who chooses this route. Humans are cheaper than self driving military trucks. You can afford to lose them. Literally-literally.
It's only in our cushy relative world peace situation we find ourselves entertaining the idea of spending a million dollars on a truck is somehow cheaper than losing a ten thousand dollar truck with 6 men on it.
I also dearly hope that Western cultural fractures don't turn into this.
And no, humans are not cheaper than self-driving trucks. They appear so at the beginning of a conflict because wars usually start when there's an excess of humans and a shortage of resources for them all. However, it takes 18 years to grow a human to the point where they can fight in a war, and another year or two to train them. It takes 2-3 years to tool up a factory to produce drones & self-driving trucks (and maybe a decade to get the software right), but once you do, you can produce one every couple days. Assuming you can maintain your industrial & technological base long enough to get that factory up, guess which one is going to win?
The limiting factor for the Japanese in WW2 wasn't planes, it was trained pilots - they had no problem crashing the planes into ships with untrained pilots because those were both abundant resources, but were incapable of fighting a sustainable air war.
One observation about the Syrian Civil War (and Iraq and Afghanistan) is that large areas of the country became extremely dangerous, because everyone was fighting over them and you often couldn't see the adversary or know who you were fighting. Another is that supply lines were quite vulnerable; forces could hole up in a military base and be relatively safe, but to continue operations in the field, they needed food/ammo/fuel, all of which needed to be transported at significant risk. A third was that whichever force brought security to a region and stopped the fighting there often won political power, because a majority of people don't care who rules them, they just want to not die.
Drones + self-driving supply lines would allow a belligerent to fortify & disperse their own industrial and operations base, well out of contested zones, and then project power at zero risk to their own lives into disputed areas. If the drones are smart enough (i.e. minimize civilian casualties but can easily detect and eliminate belligerents), they're also likely to win political points for eliminating combatants.