Robots and Drones and the Unchanging Face of SF

I've written here about technology and SF before, especially military SF.  Current military SF is pretty much resembles war in the 1990s to the 2010s, with a few twists.  It isn't very far thinking as it is about blood and guts as it exists todayl.  In the last month (August 2014) another major milestone happened when the US Navy successfully integrated drones with regular aircraft for carrier operations.  This means that the next generation of fighter pilots could have robotic wingmen, and the generation after that could be all robots.

T-72

Navy Makes History With Integrated Manned-Unmanned Carrier Ops

I'd like to see the remake of Top Gun in 2050 and see how it plays out, especially all the shenanigans they would have to pull off if they want to still stick to the original story in any close manner.  This is especially true if unmanned fighters are ruling the skies as they can pull maneuvers that could kill a pilot and be designed more efficiently without having to accommodate the pilot).  In my Exocrisis Blue universe, I basically removed manned fighters from the picture as they were just target practice for laser weaponry.  I do use attack drones though, and have pilots control a squadron of them from a small, well protected / stealthy, control aircraft if necessary.

The National Post talks about the obsolescence of fighter planes in just over one hundred years.

This is a pretty big change in story telling from a science fiction standpoint as humans are now being pushed further back out of harms way and further up the control loop.  I'd say most SF and military SF being written now is already obsolete and dated.  Reading these stories in 50 years is going to be like reading SF written in the 1950s that couldn't conceive of computers that fit on a fingernail.  SF characters (aka cannon fodder) are still on the front line as fighter pilots, crew for starships going into combat, and even powered armoured infantry assaulting enemy positions.   I think there is going to be some room for this type of action writing for specialized small ops only.  I still enjoy reading military SF that falls into the traps I talked about, but it is a real fantasy world for me now.

Things in military SF or SF in general that are starting to make me cringe include:

1. Infantry without powered armour.
2. Infantry that doesn't coordinate with an equal number or more of supporting combat robots.
3. Robots are going to be cheap and capable so they better show up.  The only way you could have no robots for dangerous situations is if there is a general prohibition that would likely stagnate your technology too.  I could easily see laws against robots taking regular jobs, but not combat roles or hazardous jobs.
4. No use of smart weapons.  Traditional firefights are going to be rare.  Use of smart bullets, bombs and grenades make the use of cover much less effective without countermeasures.  These weapons will be cheap - not expensive. 
5. Fighter aircraft that are not drones or are not working in conjunction with drones.  Human pilots cannot maneuver in person like a drone could - but a human pilot could neurally sync to pilot a robot fighter remotely in many cases.
6. BIG mechs - smaller mechs yes, tank size mechs maybe (I write about tank sized mechs and I know they really shouldn't exist, but I explained them rationally as I like the genre).
7. Starships with hundreds of crewmen that die in the deep dark vacuum of space.  It's all going to be mainly robots, even for the repair crews.  NASA is already experimenting with robot repairmen and so is the US Navy.  I'm actually starting to not like these kinds of stories as combat in space is so freaking deadly for ships and people.  With the weapons we could build, unless there truly are energy shields, ships die so easy.  How much armour would you need as radiation shielding from a contact nuke detonation, especially if it is a radiation enhanced neutron weapon?
8. Space wars need to be really well explained as you could so easily pummel an enemy planet into dust with long range bombardment of high speed or near light speed projectiles/rocks.  It is pretty hard to defend a planet without a planet sized deflector shield.  Wars will inflict horrible damage to the societies involved - much like having a global nuclear war - note we didn't go down that route so far. 
9. AIs will run the show operationally, and assist strategically.

Don't get me wrong, I still like military SF, but how the stories are going to be written will have to change in the long run.  Over at reddit, at one point I asked why SF infantry were always depicted as so terribly under-equipped too.  It is simply explained by sheer uninspired thinking for any writing more than fifty or a hundred years out.  Writers are going to have to tell their stories from a different perspective and the points of tension in the drama may have to shift.  This will create challenges as the hero will need to be placed into danger differently.  For example, how do you have a firefighting drama if the firemen in the burning building are robots that are either autonomous or remotely operated?

Also as a followup to my other post about AI (here is a short video about general purpose robots taking out jobs).

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