Plunging physical fitness test scores are even worse.[1] "Fat people don't make good soldiers … they get themselves or others hurt or killed." The US military says 31% of US youth are too fat to serve. 77% are not qualified for one or more reasons.[2]
Only 12% of American male youth who are qualified for the military are not in college.
Think about that. About 2/3 of American male youth are not good enough for either college or the military. That's a high reject rate.
The future of warfare is robotic warfare, specifically large volumes of cheap attritionable autonomous munitions.
Human soldiers are legacy technology that do not fare well against drones, for evidence (obligatory NSFW tag):
Check reddit
/r/CombatFootage/
Human soldiers are still used extensively on the battlefield - but are in the process of being replaced by machines.
We have heard this so many times. The future was mechanized warfare, or missiles, or aircraft, or stealth jets. It seems that now in Russia/Ukraine, pretty much all forms of mechanized warfare have been rendered irrelevant and you can't achieve military objectives no matter how many bombing runs you conduct with your planes. And those planes are not safe either. Same goes for Iran. You still need the guys to go in.
Another way to view those conflicts is that (horrible as it is to say) neither side has anywhere near enough missiles to completely disable their opponents.
As a thought exercise, imagine if ukraine had 100k missiles ready in a silo.
> ...neither side has anywhere near enough missiles to completely disable their opponents.
Try the US/Iran war for size then.
I'm not sure what you mean by "completely disable their opponents" - there may not be a country on earth with enough munitions to do this against a competent and resilient adversary - the Vietnam war comes to mind where the US still lost after dropping triple the bombs (by tonnage) of what the entire allied forces dropped during WWII across all theaters
Animats · · focus · HN ↗
Only 12% of American male youth who are qualified for the military are not in college.
Think about that. About 2/3 of American male youth are not good enough for either college or the military. That's a high reject rate.
[1] <a href="https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/10/10/one-third-youths-too-obese-military-service-study-finds.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/10/10/one-third-you...
[2] <a href="https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/09/28/new-pentagon-study-shows-77-of-young-americans-are-ineligible-military-service.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/09/28/new-pentagon-...
pgryko · · focus · HN ↗
Human soldiers are legacy technology that do not fare well against drones, for evidence (obligatory NSFW tag): Check reddit /r/CombatFootage/
Human soldiers are still used extensively on the battlefield - but are in the process of being replaced by machines.
torginus · · focus · HN ↗
boredatoms · · focus · HN ↗
As a thought exercise, imagine if ukraine had 100k missiles ready in a silo.
overfeed · · focus · HN ↗
Try the US/Iran war for size then.
I'm not sure what you mean by "completely disable their opponents" - there may not be a country on earth with enough munitions to do this against a competent and resilient adversary - the Vietnam war comes to mind where the US still lost after dropping triple the bombs (by tonnage) of what the entire allied forces dropped during WWII across all theaters