A war with tens or hundreds of thousand of robots versus humans and eventually against other robots will help train a new generation of combat robots how best to evaluate and kill human targets; a brave new world for programmers seeking fool-proof ways to deliver death to political opponents that breathe oxygen. Robots with AI are likely to rationalize 'Death to mouth-breathers!' Field training robots is a practical step, necessary step if they are to evolve to be effective killers of humans. The dispersion of military technology to non-belligerent nations seems like a parallel course to increase market sales in the civilian sector creating continuous increase of profits through expansion into secondary markets.
It is probable that a swift escalation in robot technology will follow a continuing war without a stoppage due to peace. Airborne drones will rise to deliver camouflage machine gun power in semi-autonomous drones that can reconnect with airlifting drones for redeployment to more optimal locations. A similar phenomena will arise if it does not already exist with airborne placement of drones with automatic grenade launchers and flame throwers.. Hundreds of forms of death flowers will bloom followed I would think by a host of anti-drone and anti-robot vectors. to fight without human combatants present initially. Then, the robot armies will seek and destroy human combatants farther from the front lines where they are ensconced in 'safer' positions.
That may be the beginning of the end of wars fought among humans with human political choices being the primary determinants of conflict. Instead the evolution of robots may enable the end of ostensible democratic leadership to war and give power over to rare elites or individuals representing vast concentrated wealth able to afford and command millions of robot warriors purposed to eliminate opposition political elements taking human form. Hence robots represent the end of democracy and rise of oligarchic plutonomy for global conquest.
Plainly soldiers will want more ai directed autonomous flying sticky mines to be able to attack robotic dogs in the field attacking them- bullets and grenades tossed from human arms might not be too effective. It isn't known if small electro-magnetic pulse grenades will be effective against robots. New forms of thermite (temperature between 4500-and 5400F Super Claymore mines with different shaped sticky packages may be effective upon opfor ground robots. Some flying vehicles might be taken down with white phosphorus flying air mines in close combat under the forest canopy situations. Adaptations to a plethora of new weapons seems ready to rapidly accelerate technologies of infantry war that of course will eventually proliferate to the rest of the world outside the present theater of combat; including of course, terrorists.
In order to capture opposition force (opfor) technology and software in various kind of robot dogs and other immobilized opfor machines the development of lightweight Faraday cages thrown by soldiers like a weighted fishnets or dropped from quite stealth drones flying above to cut off capture target robot dogs, for example will become part of an anti-drone squads battlefield toolkit. It is essential to isolate captured drone quickly so remote operators cannot order a drone to erase its software useful for reverse engineering.
Obviously there will appear mobile, stealthy flying AI 'Generals' to command battlefield drones without the presence of a human operator. The Brigadiers will be small yet with the best chips and software available and be encased in an EMP hardened shell able to avoid detection or destruction readily. If dumb battlefield drones are disabled with emp attacks the Brigadiers will download new programming to them.
With so many drone attackers in combat the U.S. Army has bought a high power microwave system that broadcast rather like an EMP, high power microwaves to take down opfor drones en mass. Obviously that technology can be adapted to kill humans. It can also be adapted to be transported by drones along with a partner carrying a power pack for the device, that will have directed evolution to more application including taking out ground combat drones. Networks of mobile microwave emission detectors will also be fielded for triangulating opfor anti-drone microwave bursts in the spiral of escalating technology of robotic war. Microwave destruction of drones with locations known to operators provide instant precise location where the Micro-wave emitter is enabling follow up counter attacks to the center of the drone destruction pattern with JDAMS, mortar and conventional artillery rounds.
When the technology proliferates and AI brigadiers become common it is possible that rogue applications of the encrypted control units may be found and applied in the general anomic breakdown of social order because of the dispersion of social control and security.
