I genuinely struggle to imagine what automated warfare would be useful for outside of defensive purposes. The idea of trying to use a self functioning machine for practical warfare feels pointless. That’s not to say automated weapons don’t exist. After all, automatic rifles, auto cannons, self propelled artillery, guided missiles, and other forms of self-firing and self-guided weapons are used all the time in warfare—hell most countries’ governments have mechanized their militaries already. However, the idea of completely relying on machines to perform every primary task a soldier would normally do, and to leave soldiers to perform all the other work necessary in wars feels as unrealistic as it would be difficult to pull off.
There’s a few questions that would have to be asked about how something like automated warfare would work. Whose gathering and analyzing all the data, what types of machines are supposed to be fully automated for combat, whose going to be maintaining and repairing the machines once they finish fighting, is it even cost efficient or necessary to automate warfare in all settings, what types of machines are going to be responsible for the things infantry men do, what are the carry limits of a machine, and more. Obviously, as humanity’s currently most used weapons incorporate more already-existing machinery, soldiers of the future can come to expect that their weapons have some level of self functioning, but the idea that wars at some point will become fully automated sounds unrealistic; it even sounds utopian even.