When the area of conflict is a border zone, advances in technology may make this tactic pointless:
Israel's border with the Gaza strip is an even more dangerous place for each soldier deployed, made more dangerous still since Israel's withdrawal of its presence in Gaza. While Israel's security fence near Gaza has drastically reduced terrorist attacks, infiltration attempts are ongoing. Rather than expose its patrols to ambushes and sniper fire, the Israelis are also substituting technology, while keeping infantry in reserve.
According to Defense News and Jane's Defence Weekly, Israel is deploying systems based on RAFAEL's "Samson Jr." RWS, mounted in pillboxes and protected by folding shields. The systems use fiber-optic communications back to an operator station or operations center, and still require a human to activate and fire the gun... for now.
Add in some roving robots along roads that run parallel to the border and missile-armed UAVs backed by precision artillery and the war of attrition will be meaningless to us.
Certainly, nothing can replace men for defending such a barrier, but the first casualties that trigger reaction by actual units could be from robots with this technology. When terrorists are losing men to remotely-operated weapons fired by soldiers far from the front, the glory of the jihad may not seem that thrilling. And kidnapping the guns camera and sensor array and putting a picture of it on the web with a masked jihadi holding wire-cutters to its mother board won't be that scary to us.
Face it, we'll exchange our robots for their psychotic killers for as long as the enemy wants to fight.
