The future of warfare - robot or nobot?

[Viking]

Is there any guarantee that robots would completely replace human soldiers? I wouldn't put it past governments to use human soldiers alongside robots in order to gain numerical superiority, or when the losing the side is growing desperate they might deploy human troops as a last resort.

It means that the option to replace human soldiers with robots will exist. Some countries might decide that it's normally hard to justify sending human soldiers into war, and will replace them with robots wherever and whenever they can. Others might simply find robots more reliable in many or most positions. Yet others might find robots more cost-efficient than human soldiers.

Cannon fodder is nothing new, so I doubt robotics would introduce a new low here - history provides strong competition.

High callibur ones should do fine against lightly armoured equipment and anti tank rifles/RPGs should be able to take out heavily armoured targets. Unless we're talking about futuristic super materials any robotics we develop will be protected by, at best, the same stuff we use to armour tanks, and as we have learned in our middle east sojurns our best protection right now is still somewhat susceptable to high velocity projectile weaponry and the occasional explosion.

Sufficiently advanced robots would be able to stop most projectiles launched at them (e.g. with lasers or counter-projectiles).