[Discussion] The future of infantry warfare

The "independently doing X" will shift to smaller units. It used to be division that could do independent assault, now it's brigade. That's about 4500 people. This will probably decrease slowly untill we hit dunbar number of 150 people, which is called a company in military slang. If you look at current infrantry company, large share of shit grunts do is just guarding places. If you can replace some guarding with sensors, you get more done with less grunts.

Motorization makes everybody move faster. But not necessarily to more difficult terrain. Just faster.

Infrantry will need more protection against cluster munitions and thermobaric bombs at all hours. Tents might go away and guys sleep in APCs or armored intermodal containers.

Weapon systems will get more "organic" at the same time infrantry will get more firepower. This has to happen because the opposite infrantry is more protected and moves faster. You need missile arty with you at all times so you can actually respond when you detect opposite forces. (Also assault rifles are likely to fade. You need to penetrate body armor, so battle rifle has to make comeback.)

Military engineering has not yet taken full advantage of civillian engineering advances. There exist equipment that can bury those intermodal containers into ground in no time. But only IDF seems to have them in sufficient numbers. And I don't think even they have them organic enough yet.

Signals get's tricky. You can't use radio close to the front and expect to be alive in 15 minutes. Anti-radiation missiles fired from tracked platforms will stiffle most communications. It's likely we see some sort of "pigeon" drones delivering messages.

Nothing can be armored thick enough to take anything. So staying alive will be either racing against enemy communication relay by changing your coordinates. Or alternatively be too cheap to kill. Borbably both. So cost reduction gets even more important than it was previously. And you need to get unit size smaller.

Anti-tank seems to go towards tank destroyers again. Because 10kg missile can only have so much lethal filling and a grunt can't carry 30kg missiles around all day. But this time tank destroyers won't have big guns. That would be too expencive post launch. Likely small anti-tank-missile carrying platforms.

/r/CredibleDefense Thread