In the “kill zone” of a lethal video game

From The Economist

It has never been a great time to be an infantryman. But today’s conditions are especially pitiable. Today they risk finding themselves in the “kill zone” of a lethal video game.

Every day each side produces thousands of “first-person view” (FPV) drones used to hunt and kill one-on-one. Their use accounts for a significant fraction of the 1.1m-1.4m Russian soldiers whom The Economist estimates to have been killed or wounded in the war: one in 25 of the country’s men under 50. Ukraine’s losses are lower, in part because it is costlier to attack than to defend, in part because Ukraine has gone further in substituting robots for humans. But Ukrainian losses are proportionally greater, equating to one in 16 of its pre-war 18- to 49-year-olds.

Some say this is now the future of wars in which states seek to capture territory: two sides endlessly pinned down by small, cheap and all-seeing killers. General Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s ambassador to London and formerly its commander-in-chief, says that large-scale manoeuvre warfare—armies moving with speed and shock, in contrast to frontal, attritional battles—is now “unattainable”. It will become possible again only when wars evolve into robot-on-robot fighting at machine speed.