Image: Spc. Chenee’ Brooks/NCO Journal

The Pentagon anounced that it’s cutting the size of the Army to pre-World War II levels in order to meet its budget for 2015. According to Reuters, there are about 520,000 soldiers in the Army, which was expected to decrease to 490,000 by next year. Now, the Department of Defense says the number will drop to between 440,000 and 450,000 soldiers, which marks a pretty significant decrease: The lowest post-World War II figure was 479,426 in 1999. Presumably, none of those numbers include robots.

The main reasoning behind the personnel cuts, according to the Defense Department, is that the US does not need to maintain a force capable of large-scale land occupation when the war in Afghanistan is drawing to a close. Instead, the military is increasing its focus on special operations and cyberwar—and increasing its use of robots.

The growth of war bots has been noted for years now, thanks to revelations about the drone war and key reports like Peter Singer’s 2010 “War Machines” story for Scientific American. Since then, we’ve seen the military head further into its cyberpunk phase, with autonomous killer robots now going through testing, which the UN has cautioned against. But in the near term, the reality for the military means higher tech soldiers in fewer numbers; whether they are firing smart rifles or flying drones, a high-tech, automated army can be less costly if utilized effectively.

Such realities are reflected in other cuts, including the retiring of the much-vaunted A-10 attack plane, which has provided crucial support to troops on the ground. But since they’re about to be fewer in number, and the possibility of another conflict against large-scale forces, like that of the first Gulf War, is fading, such vehicles can be phased out.

“I have other ways to solve that tactical problem. It may not be as elegant as the A-10, but I can still get the job done, but that solution is usable in another level of conflict in which the A-10 is totally useless,” Gen. Michael Hostage, the commander of the Air Force’s Air Combat Command, told Defense News a few weeks ago. “It does not make any sense to cut the other program and cut A-10s if I have to give one up for the other. I really save the big bucks when I take an entire [platform] and shut it down because I save the squadrons of those airplanes but I also save the logistics infrastructure, the training infrastructure and all of the overhead.”

What is filling in the gap? Amongst other things, drones. According to the 2014 budget, the Army budgeted at least $550 million for MQ-1 Predator drone procurement, which may seem like a lot of money. But those costs pale in comparison to the F-35, which is now the most expensive weapons procurement program in history.

Now, it’s not a straightforward comparison, as the F-35, ridiculously costly and convoluted the program may be, still far outperforms a Predator or any other drone. But with the US military’s odds of fighting a direct air-to-air battle much lower than they used to be, slow, cheap, unmanned drones have filled in nicely. And the success of drones is fueling their development; the UK’s BAE just tested its supersonic drone, while the Navy has $146 million dedicated in this year’s budget to its Unmanned Carrier Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike (UCLASS) System. 

While the military is also interested in projects ranging from DARPA’s robot toys to unmanned ground vehicle programs—the Tactical Unmanned Ground Vehicle (TUGV) and FCS Unmanned Ground Vehicles are a nice pair—drones are the big focus right now. 

“Downward economic forces will continue to constrain Military Department budgets for the foreseeable future. Achieving affordable and cost-effective technical solutions is imperative in this fiscally constrained environment,” reads the Department of Defense’s 2013-2038 drone roadmap. It also notes that “enemy unmanned systems will complicate air, ground, and maritime operations by adding new low-altitude, ground, and amphibious threats to the force that must be countered.”

The roadmap does note that drone budgets were cut by a third from 2013 to 2014, which came before today’s announced cuts. But even with budget cuts, they’re still an integral part of the military’s new strategy; one of the military’s stated goals is to increase integration between automated systems and soldiers, including researching how best to jack them in.

And the above quote about enemies’ robots offers insight into the online battlefield. As recent cyberwar exercises between South Korea and the US showed, hacking attacks are increasingly pressing focus for the military. Add in President Obama’s pick of the Navy’s top cyberwarrior to run the NSA and US Fleet Cyber Command, and you’ve got more proof that the future of war is digital—and as go the wars, so go the soldiers.

“It’s not going to be man versus machine or machine overtaking man. It’s not going to be an ‘us’ versus ‘them,’” Michael Toscano, president of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International told the Christian Science Monitor last year. “It’s going to be a ‘we.’”