[mr_overalls]

> The last time the battlefield was insanely lethal people just dig trenches to even survive the day.

Trench warfare proliferated when a revolution in firepower was unmatched by similar advances in mobility.

Most likely, ongoing advances in stealth, armor, area denial, anti-drone tech, etc. will preclude its reappearance on the battlefield.

[fennecfoxen]

Trenches weren't even all that great at protecting people in their days. What the multi-layer trench systems were good at was more or less "making it hard for the enemy to hold this territory for more than a few hours or days after taking it."

[nvelty]

During the more conventional phase of the 1st Chechen War, the Chechens made good use of hastily dug zig-zag trenches to limit the effects of Russian artillery and air support. The real revolution now is the proliferation of precision weapons and the use of drones to enable targeting for supporting fires. The trench still matters, but now camouflage and deception is equally important to prevent accurate targeting of a position. The marines did some testing in a drone-saturated environment and had to reshuffle their tactical doctrine to put a much higher emphasis on immediately camouflaging their position.

[Qworg]

Also, among other things, laser guided airburst 40mm grenades make trenches not a great option.

[horsawlarway]

I mean, shotguns also made trenches a really not great option.

Bad enough that Germany literally tried to get them banned, and considered them a violation of the Hague conventions...

Video games make a joke of shotguns, but they're disgustingly effective in real life.

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"On September 15, 1918, the German government officially protested the use of the shotgun in a note verbale—an unsigned diplomatic note—transmitted to the Spanish Embassy in Berlin, then to the Swiss Embassy, and eventually to the American legation in Berne, Switzerland. The note asserted that the use of shotguns by U.S. forces violated Article 23(e) of the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions and warned that any American captured with a shotgun or shotgun ammunition would be executed."

[sudosysgen]

There aren't really anymore advances in stealth and armor. If anything anti-stealth and anti-armor tech is advancing much more rapidly.

What is advancing is area denial, anti-drone tech, and active protection systems.

[nvelty]

Stealth will always be important - it's just a numbers game to try and optimize RCS vs an opponent's radar systems. The big thing going forward will be creating resilient networks of shooters/sensors. This is where drones will make their money - spotting stuff via camera or radar for other manned planes, SAMs, or artillery.

[sudosysgen]

It's not, actually. Minimizing RCS hits a hard, unavoidable wall once the wavelength of the radar is close to that of the object. So it's a matter of getting large wavelength radars that are accurate enough.