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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/44041
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/44041
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The horse is not dead yet.

**Consider tanks**. They are a century old technology, so they've been around for a while. Yet they did not kick foot soldiers from the battlefields. There are tasks that tanks are incapable of doing, there are requirements that make the use of tanks unfeasible in certain situations, and of course an army can't be made of armored vehicles _only_ (I'm aware tanks need to be manned, but let's assume it's not relevant to the discussion here).

As warfare elvolves with even more sophisticated and automatized tools, it's perfectly fine to assume that infantry forces will become less relevant. With battles moving up in space and ships being equipped with the oh-so-typical planet destroyer death ray it's perfectly fine to ask if human soldiers still have a place on the battlefield.

Yet, there are things that a death-ray can't do. You can destroy a planet, sure; and if you have space-superiority you can effectively enforce an embargo on that same planet. Through orbital bombardments, it's safe to assume that a superior fleet could take control of the place without ever landing a single guy on the surface.

But what about guerrilla fighting? If the populace on the surface start revolting, you'll eventually have to land some infantry forces on the ground (unless you are some kind of evilish and ineffective empire, and you decide to just bomb everything in retaliation, including factories and resources, to a fine dust).

Of course, the infantry forces in question could be robotic, if your technology can make an effective use of drones and androids. Yet, if people are still in command, someone will land. If people are in charge (rather than AI's) even a small percentage of the infantry team will be human staff.

**To wrap this up, it does depend a lot on your setting.** It's up to the worldbuilding to explain why the presence of something apparently antiquate is still a thing in a science fiction enviroment.

But the horse is not dead. it can be mechanized, remote-controlled, or restrained to a secondary role; but it's not dead yet, at least not in the general case.

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