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Originally Posted by Skybird
Drones take over the air war within the forseeable future now, I think. The next field where I could imagine drones becoming the dominant platform, are naval forces. That could help against the personnel problem of reserve forces that you outlined.
A very major step will be the shift from remote-controlled drones to autonomous drones. Only this will really adress the vulnerability of RC drones. I imagine the developing of such software is no easy task.
What for the forseeable future will remain difficult to replace it by drones, is the boot on the ground. However, the opposing boot on the ground can be hampered by own air drones.
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True, although drones are really just starting up, but definitely they are the future of the armed forces, and when autonomous drones come online then the whole balance of warfare is going to change quite spectacularly. I expect that the Terminator series will suddenly become very popular again...
I'm surprised that more hasn't taken place with land and sea drones, but with land drones I guess the RC is a limitation, you'd have to use either satellite or LOS which both have disadvantages.
Given the advances in AI technology, I'd carefully pencil in autonomous drones by 2020, perhaps 2017 at the earliest. In terms of saving the economy though, I think it's a little too little too late.