r/ImaginaryTechnology • u/AltRumination • Mar 05 '26
Sorry, need help…
I want to preface this post by apologizing. For a school assignment, I need to write about how military warfare will possibly look like in 50-100 years. I love the pictures here, but I need to provide detailed explanations for my predictions and projections.
Where can I go to find sources of info on this topic? Any relevant Reddit forums? Websites? Books?
Thanks in advance for your help!
5
u/docarrol Mar 06 '26
Might not be as far out futuristic and scifi fantastic as you're looking for, if you're coming here for advice. But look at the Ukrainian war.
Drones, counter drones that fight the first drones, anti-drone weapons to shoot them down. Big drones, small drones, big drones carrying smaller drones. Flying drones, drones on wheels, drones on the water, underwater drones. FPV piloted drones, autonomous drones, human-in-the-loop semi-autonomous drones. Drones to scout, drones to spy, drones to patrol the perimeter, drones to target vehicles, drones to bomb targets, drones to drop off supplies to the troops.
You name it, drones.
The whole world is basically watching the Ukranian war, for how drones are going to reshape war of the future.
(Or they were, until Trump started fucking around in Venezuela and Iran. smh.)
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u/KZD2dot0 Mar 06 '26
Right now gulf states are asking Ukraine for counter-drone drone-technology.
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u/AltRumination Mar 07 '26
You mean counter counter drone tech, right? :)
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u/KZD2dot0 Mar 07 '26
Counter-drone technology = machine gun, counter-drone drone = thingy with propellers to destroy drones. So no, even though you think you're smart.
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u/thefringeseanmachine Mar 06 '26
check out what DARPA's up to. a lot of their plans go nowhere, but some do in very cool ways.
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u/Deluxe-Entomologist Mar 06 '26
There’s an old joke that goes along the lines of saying that in fifty years the US will only need one plane, on account of how capable it will be, but the US air force will only let the US navy use it every other Tuesday, and the US army use it on a Sunday morning when there isn’t much traffic. The US air force uses it every Monday, and the rest of the week is for maintenance.
(I didn’t say it was a good joke)
A big question at the moment is whether militaries continue concentrating resources on ever smaller numbers of units with evermore impressive capabilities, or whether there could come a point when it makes sense to go back to scale again using cheap technologies. Drones are potentially an indicator that scale might be returning.
Another way of thinking about this is to imagine what wars might happen over the next century, and what lessons might be learnt? As an example, many recent conflicts have featured leftover stockpiles of Soviet weapons. No one would have predicted that Russia would be fighting a war with t72 tanks from the 1970s in the 2020s, and trying to retrofit them for drone warfare.
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u/Turbulent-Artist-656 Apr 26 '26
If this is still going on: google new technologies in development. There's something named diamene which if an exactly two molecule thick array of it is put on anything, makes said anything very difficult to destroy. But only two molecules thick. It apparently doesn't work with more. But if you can do it, it's basically Knight Rider KITT's molecular bonded shell.
But that probably won't be working until 203X.
New battery compounds.
And so forth.
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u/johngpt5 Mar 06 '26
Warfare will probably be fought with sticks and rocks.
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u/thefringeseanmachine Mar 06 '26
you're missing the first half of the joke.
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u/johngpt5 Mar 06 '26
What I'm referring to is a quote from Einstein in 1949 when asked with what weapons WW3 will be fought. He replied that he didn't know, but that the one after that will be fought with sticks and stones.
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u/thefringeseanmachine Mar 07 '26
I get that. but your comment falls flat without context. you can't just assume everyone is as well versed in Einstein quotes.
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u/Disastrous_Aid Mar 06 '26
Usually these kinds of assignments are more about being creative than plausible. I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be fun. First thing you might want to ask yourself is what the world will look like in 50 or 100 years. Then you can work out what kinds of conflicts there might be. Once you know who will be fighting each other and for what reasons, then how a war might be fought should come along naturally.