Not to turn this much into a TNZ post I guess, right now a war basically between NATO and the Russians is being fought with drones and missile strikes. Entire Russian positions are being taken out by drone pilots flying 100 dollar drops with grenades strapped to them, armor being destroyed with HIMARs and artillery strikes from miles away.
Like I said before, "Man & Machine". Not "Man or Machine".
You need to pair both to get the best effective use out of both.
Also, Ukraine has a personnel problem, they're outnumbered significantly in terms of man power compared to Russia. So they can't afford to risk lives and throw people into the grinder like Russia has done.
Ukraine is fighting Smart, Russia is using it's one natural advantage, man-power.
It's going to end up destroying Russia's future because Putin is dumb.
Yes troops are going to be used to control or retake territory, but there's a reason why the Ukrainians are asking for more jets and missiles and advanced tech, not for more boots on the ground. They want the advanced tech because that's what is required for a conventional battle. And that's before even considering asymmetrical warfare and how large occupation forces don't work either.
As with remote control tech, it maximizes damage, minimizes casualties on your side.
It's the smart way to fight when you have a home field advantage and want to minimize loss on your side.
That's before we even get to guerilla warfare.
it seems wild to me that in a future where there are likely full AI drones, even more weapons of mass destruction and also weapons that can be much more targeted like phasers, that you'd send in hundreds of thousands of troops to occupy a planet. Even the logistics of doing that alone are kind of wild - Google says a Galaxy class ship can hold anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 people. I have no idea if they have ships of that size in the TOS era, but I assume Constitution class ships would hold much less. How many ships would you need to dedicate to basically launch D-day style invasions/defences of planets across the front?
IMO, in the future 1x Organic Soldier should be out in the field remote commanding 12x "Data / EMH level" Combat droids.
He'll have 2x Droids with him at all times to watch his back, but he'll be out in the field command and controlling a full 12x unit Fire Squad that works in pairs.
So imagine for every 10,000 Organic Soldiers, you have 120,000 Combat Droids on the offensive with 20,000 on Defense for a total of 150,000 Soldiers in total.
Now imagine that's for only 1x Galaxy Class sized ship.
Imagine what a 1000+ Fleet of ships, each one filled with soldiers would do.
1,000+ Ships with 150,000 Soldiers each. 150,000,000 Soldiers spread over a entire planet covering at least 1,000+ battle fields or cities or important areas, taking over key infrastructure / supplies / HVT's (Highly Valued Targets).
That's just 1x Fleet, imagine when you have millions of Fleets in all of StarFleet.
After Vietnam and Afghanistan, I think the idea of sending large occupation forces to sit on a location for decades is presumably never going to be repeated again. Or at least I'd hope people at the various military colleges out there realize that fighting a war like WW2 doesn't make any sense in 2023... let alone 2223.
The main issue with Afghanistan was that the local culture didn't have a sense of National Identity. They're very much a rural / tribal people in nature.
Unlike Japan after WW2 or Korea, those people have "National Identity" and wanted to remain a unified country.
Vietnam was handed over to the locals, they couldn't hold the line 2 years after and needed to be evacuated.
If you watched any of the interviews with the Vietnamnese General Minh, they were "Very Close to Surrendering" after some of the massive bombing campaigns, but the US let up and they were able to survive becuse the US internal political issues back home forced the White House to give up applying pressure in Vietnam due to the political back-lash. That's what allowed them to survive and re-build their forces so that 2x years after the US left, they had enough forces to take over the rest of the country.
Hell, in the context of DS9, the Bajorans proved that large scale occupation doesn't work if you have a people fanatical enough to fight an asymmetrical war to drive out occupiers - because they have access to technology that renders large groups of troops ineffective.
It's not so much that, it's more the unity of the people and the willingness to fight the invaders to the bitter end.
But like, I also understand why you want to use those tropes. Because people have WW2 and Vietnam in mind, at least in an American/Western context, so it's easy to evoke that imagery of doctors on a war front patching up soldiers constantly being dropped off.
Local improvised Medical Hospitals will always be a thing in a war zone.
Like I'm not expecting The Expanse from Star Trek... I get that it's a total different thing, which is why for me it's a nitpick rather than something that ruins the episode (and basically most of DS9) for me.
To me, the local improvised Medical Hospital made perfect sense in a "War Zone".
