Infantry

Infantry are soldiers who fight on foot, the foot soldiers who close with and destroy the enemy, hold ground, and endure the direct, close, physical reality of combat. They are the oldest and most fundamental of the combat arms, and despite every technological revolution in warfare, from gunpowder to aircraft to precision weapons to drones, the infantry endures because of one stubborn truth: in the end, wars are decided by taking and holding ground, and only the infantry can hold ground, occupying and controlling the physical terrain that all the firepower in the world can dominate but cannot itself possess. Aircraft, artillery, and missiles can destroy, deny, and dominate territory, but they cannot occupy it, and occupying territory, being physically present on the ground to control it, is ultimately what decides who holds a place, which is the infantry's enduring and irreplaceable role.

Why the infantry endures despite everything

The recurring prediction that technology would make the infantry obsolete has been wrong every time, because the infantry's fundamental function, physically occupying and holding ground, closing with the enemy in the places firepower cannot reach, cannot be performed by anything else. Firepower can dominate ground, making it deadly for the enemy to be there, but domination is not possession, and a piece of terrain is only truly held when soldiers are physically on it, controlling it, which is the infantry's job and which no aircraft, missile, or drone can do. This is why every war, however technologically advanced, ultimately comes down to the infantry, the foot soldiers who go into the buildings, the trenches, the woods, and the streets to take and hold the ground, enduring the close, dangerous, exhausting reality of combat that the more distant arms are spared. The infantry also operates where other arms cannot, in the close terrain of cities, forests, and mountains where firepower is constrained and where the fight becomes a close, infantry affair, in the buildings and confined spaces that must be cleared by soldiers on foot, and in the direct contact with the enemy and the population that only the physical presence of infantry provides. The war in Ukraine, for all its drones, precision weapons, and technology, remained fundamentally a war fought and held by infantry in trenches and ruined towns, a stark reminder that beneath the technological sophistication, ground warfare still comes down to foot soldiers taking and holding terrain in brutal close combat, the infantry's enduring reality unchanged by the technology around them.

Modern infantry, while performing the same fundamental role as foot soldiers throughout history, are far more capable and better supported than their predecessors, equipped and trained to fight in a way that integrates them with the firepower, mobility, and technology of modern war. The individual infantry soldier carries better weapons, protection, and equipment than ever, body armor, advanced rifles and anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons, night vision, and communications, and the infantry fights as part of the combined-arms team, supported by armor, artillery, and air, and increasingly by the drones and precision weapons that have come to the small unit, so that modern infantry can call down firepower, see in the dark, kill tanks and aircraft, and coordinate with other arms in ways the foot soldier of the past could not. Infantry mobility has increased through the vehicles that carry them, mechanized and motorized infantry riding in armored vehicles that move them and support them, though they still dismount to do the fundamental infantry work of closing with the enemy and holding ground on foot, and airborne and air-assault infantry can be delivered by parachute and helicopter to places foot movement could not reach. Yet for all these enhancements, the essential nature of the infantry, soldiers who fight on foot to close with the enemy and hold ground, remains, and the modern infantryman, however well equipped, still faces the ancient, brutal reality of close combat, of physically taking and holding terrain against an enemy trying to kill them, which is what the infantry has always done and what makes it, despite everything, the arm that ultimately decides the ground war.

The infantry's burden

The infantry bears a disproportionate share of the burden and cost of war, suffering the heaviest casualties and enduring the harshest conditions, because their role, closing with the enemy and holding ground, puts them in the most direct and dangerous contact with combat. Throughout history and into the present, the infantry has taken the greatest losses of any arm, since they are the ones physically present in the fight, exposed to the enemy's fire at close range, enduring the direct violence of combat that the more distant arms experience less, and the grim arithmetic of war has always fallen most heavily on the foot soldiers who do the close fighting and holding. They also endure the harshest physical conditions, the exhaustion, exposure, fear, and privation of sustained combat on foot, living rough in the field, carrying heavy loads, and enduring the physical and psychological demands of the infantry's life, which are among the most punishing in the military. This burden is the price of the infantry's essential role, since the function of taking and holding ground in close combat cannot be performed without exposing soldiers to the direct danger and hardship of that combat, and the infantry's endurance of this burden, its willingness to close with the enemy and hold ground despite the cost, is what makes it the arm that ultimately decides the ground war, and what has earned the infantry a particular respect in military culture, as the soldiers who bear the heaviest weight of war. The persistence of the infantry through every technological change, and the persistence of its heavy burden, reflect the unchanging reality that war, however it evolves, still comes down in the end to foot soldiers taking and holding ground, enduring the close combat that decides who controls the terrain, a reality that technology has transformed in countless ways but never eliminated, keeping the infantry, and its burden, at the heart of ground warfare.

Will drones and robots eventually replace the infantry?

They will change and support the infantry substantially, but replacing it entirely faces the same obstacle that every past prediction of the infantry's obsolescence encountered, the need to physically occupy and hold ground, which so far only soldiers on the ground can do. Drones and robotic systems are transforming how the infantry fights, providing reconnaissance, firepower, and support that make the infantry more capable and, in some tasks, taking on dangerous jobs that once fell to soldiers, and the trend of adding unmanned systems to the infantry's toolkit is real and accelerating, changing the character of infantry combat. But the fundamental infantry function, physically occupying terrain to control it, closing with the enemy in the close terrain where control must be exercised on the ground, and holding a place by being present on it, has not yet been shown to be something machines can do in place of soldiers, since holding ground means being there, controlling the physical space, interacting with the terrain and often the population in ways that require presence and judgment that current robotic systems cannot provide. So the likely future is infantry increasingly supported, augmented, and in some tasks substituted by unmanned systems, fighting alongside drones and robots that extend their reach and reduce their exposure, rather than infantry replaced by them, at least until and unless machines can genuinely occupy and hold ground the way soldiers do, which remains beyond current capability. The infantry has survived every previous technology that was supposed to make it obsolete, because the need to hold ground endured, and while drones and robots will profoundly change infantry warfare, the enduring requirement to physically take and hold terrain suggests that soldiers on the ground, however much they are supported and augmented by machines, will remain essential to deciding the ground war for the foreseeable future, the latest technology changing the infantry's tools and tactics without eliminating its fundamental and irreplaceable role.