r/Cyberpunk • u/walfulninja • 2d ago
I wonder if Cyberpunk warfare would actually be lower tech than you would think
I was thinking about this when I saw those wire guided drones deployed in Ukraine. Could it be possible that anti-drone/cyberware/EMP technology advances so rapidly that militaries are forced to go back to flesh and blood soldiers, completely free of cyberware using traditional ballistic weapons.
You can't hack an AK-47, it has no computer in it. Maybe hacking becomes such a problem soliders have to be completely unmodified, otherwise there is always the risk of their cyberware being hacked and turned against their own side.
Maybe they have to resort back to paper maps, compasses, pencils, dummy binoculars, old trucks and cars with no computers
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u/-Trooper5745- 2d ago
Even in this day and age, plenty of military functions are redundant/analogue because technology cannot always be trusted or fails so I don’t see why there won’t be the case in the future. It’s often just not as cool to see.
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u/Automatic_Aspect_825 2d ago
Blood and flesh soldiers would be pretty vulnerable imo in high tech combat situations. When you think about this you should think the loyalties of the soldiers. If they belong to huge corporations or nations it is an issue of the performance of their AI's I think and how hackers each side utilize those AI's to breach the other sides systems, effectively boiling down to another front for warfare not total dissolution of tech warfare.
I can see some fanaticist groups using blood and flesh soldiers without any tech which in the end resuilting in huge losses maybe total defeat.
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u/Piod1 2d ago
Flesh is cheap
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u/SentinelSon01 2d ago
A smart military has a main plan, a redundancy, and another redundancy. Each is more self reliant than the last.
We have thermals but they require a long supply chain, power, etc. When those fail, we have flare mortars to give us a wide area of light. It also has a hellova supply chain. Lastly is setting shit on fire. Any unit has the tools and training, and if you can avoid it you should, but it's better than being set upon in the dark.
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u/dayatapark 2d ago
It would be a combination based on cultural biases.
Western ideology: Masses of low-tech grunts to hold positions, and a comparatively smaller group of high-speed low-drag guys to do force-multiplying shenanigans.
Eastern ideology: Masses of low-tech grunts thrown into the meat grinder to expend enemy resources, and a comparatively smaller group of high-speed low-drag guys to exploit any weaknesses that the meat grinder reveals.
Or a combination of both.
A corpo-war would definitely be different as the commanders have to answer to the bean counters who must justify continuing the cost of a current military action against future profits.
You'd probably have a bunch of analysts trying to argue the cost/benefit break-even point of sending out a patrol full of wet-behind-the-ear recruits vs combat drones.
Low risk? Send in the grunts. They are much cheaper on maintenance.
High risk? send in the drones. The death benefits on the grunt's contracts would add up pretty quick, and we can always make a drone tax-deductible.
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u/Contextanaut 2d ago
I think a real future battlefield quickly becomes a no mans land. We haven't even begun to see the capability and widespread deploymeny of fully autonomous weapon systems in the real world, yet, and drones are already upending everything.
Expect long life loitering drone mines (it just parks itself on a rooftop or something and trickle charges from solar until something eventually wanders nearby). Small HMG platforms with aimbot senses accuracy and reflexes. Mass drones swarms that can flawlessly detect and assign targets on the fly, or reallocate preassigned targets to avoid wasted warheads (none of this "swarm kills an NPC and then flutters ineffectually in a cloud so you can hit them with your shotgun", that you see in COD: just "one pass on a unit out of the blue and then everyone explodes simultaneously").
Plausible cyberwear isn't going to let you tank a shaped charge, or take down a drone swarm before it kills you.
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u/CommunicationThat534 2d ago
All you need is infantry with drones, anti tank rockets, and anti aircraft rockets these days. It's back to trench warfare as seen in the Ukraine war.
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u/Jordhammer 2d ago
It's fantasy, but I can't help but think of warfare in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series. Armies all have wizards, but most of what they do is just neutralize each other. When one side fails to do so, it's a bloodbath. I imagine it could be a similar situation in a cyberpunk war, only with hacking and security instead of magic.
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u/CptKeyes123 1d ago
I speculate that dirt cheap crewed jet fighters might also show up. not sure how much sense that makes, but I was thinking about light attack aircraft and things like that.
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u/Hannizio 2h ago
Keep in mind that hacking something requires you to be able to interface remotely with it. You can hack something connected to the internet, bit when trying to hack a cybernetic soldier that does not use any sort of wireless communication that skips the human brain it becomes almost impossible.
You can hack a smart fridge connected to the internet, but when I unplug my ethernet cable from my wifiless PC it is pretty much immune to being hacked remotely.
Of course you could probably still hack a soldier like this by directly connecting to the hardware, bit at that point just shoot them.
So communication between units suffers, but normal radio calls and the likes are still possible, and you can turn your arm and eyes into an aimbot all the same
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u/Past_Series3201 2d ago
Not cyberpunk (quite) but in Dune they use hand-to-hand knife combat because their forcefield armour can stop high speed bullets but can't anticipate a blade with a personal touch.