Sticks replaced fists, spears replaced sticks, swords replaced spears, and guns replaced swords.
Modern drones have the potential to replace guns as the primary weapon employed in wars, but these weapons suffer from many issues. The most obvious of these issues is the time these things can remain airborne. Modern wars feature battles that remain continuous for weeks to months on end, but most military drones only can remain airborne for a few minutes. Stacking this issue on top of the vulnerability these weapons have to winds, storms, and explosives, and these weapons can quickly become entirely useless for long-term use.
Another major problem is range and size. Modern gun drones don’t have a lot of range if they’re not built big. However, that requirement of these weapons just leaves them increasingly exposed to getting shot down. It’s not just firepower either that makes these weapons vulnerable. Any positive changes in the flight duration, maximum altitude, speed, and the capabilities of any individual drone will see a subsequent increase in a drone’s size.
With enough investment, these weapons should be able to overcome most of these problems and be the thing that replaces the gun. However, these weapons currently are only useful for niche purposes in wars than a true successor to humanity’s primary weapon of choice.
>>5277the first paragraph. and it underlines a severe lack of understanding
spears were never replaced by swords, and it isn't that they coexisted because there was a gradual replacement, in most cases they were part of the same system. artillery didn't replace guns and aviation didn't replace artillery because that's not how it works. today more than ever militaries are complex systems composed of different interconnected sub-systems
>>5275Swords did not replace spears, in fact spears and pole arms were usually the primary melee weapon for infantry, with swords and daggers serving as secondary and/or tertiary weapons, this is of course up until guns had become the primary infantry weapon, which also had bayonets (essentially spears), drones will likely not replace guns because of a multitude of reasons. For starters the form factor of drones do not allow as much ammo to be carried generally speaking, it also makes more sense economically and militarily to diversify and have a great deal of redundancies, this way your enemy cannot take out all your industrial base so easily, then there is the ability to produce at scale, it is simply easier to make small arms ammunition at scale than drone tech, lastly you'd have to consider EW jamming and other drone counters that are in the works, lasers and microwave weapons are beginning to look promising though they are still in their infancy.