[Ultra Tech] Non-lethal warfare at TL9

[seasalt]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Lots of electrolasers, sleep gas and tangler munitions where human vs. human combat is expected.

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Depending on the level of medical technology available weapons that "temporarily maim" targets might be acceptable. E.g., blinding lasers are acceptable if blindness can be repaired with surgery or cyberware.

If you want to really limit casualties, restrict war to online VR settings with AI computers acting as referees. Alternately, make war similar to low TL ritual combat where impressive threat displays, counting coup, first blood and wins in champions duels are more important than actual combat.

Combat hardsuits make electrolasers, sleep gas, and blinding lasers useless.

As for using entirely drones or restricting it to VR or some kind of extreme sports - I see that as a non-viable solution, because inevitably, one side will accuse the other of cheating, and you'll be right back to fighting for real. I imagine that in a conflict with serious stakes, a lot of the soldiers (and indeed, commanders) actually do want to kill whoever they're fighting against - it's just that the majority population, nationally and globally, doesn't accept such measures.

And yes, this unstable equilibrium applies to the whole setting - it's ripe for someone to eventually just throw out the whole rulebook. But that's a much greater escalation than just moving to using real physical force.

Likewise, in a TL9 society (I chose that TL for a reason), fielding military forces of nothing but robots is prohibitively expensive and carries steep downsides.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The thing that occurs to me after a little contemplation is a sort of "passive aggressive" defense model.

For example, you place minefields of escalating lethality in front of some position that your strategy says you must hold. Then you put warning signs. Then it becomes your enemy's fault if he sends troops into your minefield to clear it.

You could hit that triple digit figure of unsustainable losses pretty quickly.

That's an interesting concept. But I think that in a society where dying in warfare is not normalized, soldiers might not be willing to enter a clearly marked minefield at all. In real warfare, you know that if your side loses, it's very likely you'll be killed anyway. But in this case there is less incentive to take on such a dangerous mission. I'm sure you'd get some macho guys volunteering to do it, but not the whole force.

And besides, minefields need to be covered by fire to be effective, so you still need defending troops with ranged weapons.

On the other hand - in a very casualty averse society it might very well be that "war" is basically a competitive mineclearing contest where both sides mostly just build and attack battlefield obstacles and avoid engaging eachother directly.

Will respond to some of the others later on.