
The Battlefield is dead - rcarrigan87
https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-bloody-field-of-battle-made-way-for-precision-drones
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cujic9
War is evolving in a weird way.

In the last few decades, the US population stopped tolerating human
casualties, so now every mission must have overwhelming force to minimize the
chance of losing a single soldier. This has caused the cost of missions to
skyrocket. (Forget about the opportunity cost of using that money to feed
people or provide health care.)

Drones have "fixed" this problem by removing humans from the offensive
entirely. As a side effect, there is no longer a "front" to the war. (The
point of this article.)

You would think that the front is now everywhere. But that's not the case.

You'd think that the front is now targeted at specific strategic targets.
That's _kind of_ the case, but not really.

In actuality, the front is now determined by whatever can maximize media
coverage to sway popular opinion. Planet Money did an interesting episode on
this recently:
[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/08/25/546127444/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/08/25/546127444/episode-790-rough-
translations-in-ukraine)

> When NPR reporter Gregory Warner arrives in a town on the Ukrainian front
> lines, residents try to keep their distance. 'Don't come here,' they say.
> 'When journalists come, the bombs fall."

