Even the sloppiest teams on the ground don’t routinely kill 100 wedding guests, time and time again like the drone strikes do. And if they do, they don’t get to get home at 5 pm and have dinner in their suburb after a deed well done. Drones scale out with little immediate cost, other than festering resentment half a world across.
Currently the drone operators experience PTSD from loitering over targets for hours, but with increased automation, maybe someone won’t even have to look at the images. Just “authenticate” a strike based on weighed parameters. War can be made much more streamlined yet.
The time when battles were up-close and personal isn't known for its peacefulness. With an exception for Pax Romana, where enemies were crushed and more or less successfully integrated.
