I kind of don’t even understand how, in the age of missles, we still have tanks and soldiers at all. I guess I don’t understand how missles work. My assumption is that they’re able to just erase anything that is in a spot you indicate in some kind of Google maps interface. If they’re not that smart, I don’t understand why not. How do armies still march and drive around in tanks when the enemy can just push a button on their phone and cause explosions where they are?
If you shoot a missile costing millions to hundreds of millions at everything, your country will be bankrupt very quickly.
Long range missiles roughly do work the way you described, but if you press the “erase this spot” button and then the tank or soldier moves, you just wasted a missile. You also first need to find the tank, and your missile can be shot down.
Of course there are missiles that are able to track moving targets, but that gets even more expensive, less reliable, etc.
Missiles also have a hard time dealing with heavily reinforced/underground targets, and missiles can’t occupy territory.
Who will win: a country that has 100 long range missiles, or a country that has 10000 soldiers spread out in more than 100 groups, with rifles and a couple hundred short range missiles (think Javelin) for good measure?
