Max

Being human shaped is a wild disadvantage in many contexts as well. Creating machines allows for all sorts of geometry humans simply aren’t capable of mimicking. The idea of designing something to look human for the sake of doing so seems like a non-starter. If being human shaped is optimal for a task, so be it, but it just feels like people unable to overcome a sci-if image of the future (robot people doing everything for us) that existed before contemporary industrialization and frankly had much more to do with humans acting the parts in film and theater and ease of humans relating to human appearing objects in film and other media than any imagined industrial utility of human shaped robots.

Blaming the proxy when it doesn’t work out, and claiming the issue is cost is just cope to make NATO countries feel confident it’s the dum dum Slavs fault and not the reality that NATO has little to no tech or strategic advantage over anyone who is actually a rival military. NATO doctrine during the ‘war on terror’ involved using as many munitions as possible in “shock and awe” attacks but maybe NATO wasn’t willing to extend the use of that tactic to a lowly proxy. Or maybe NATO doctrine only applies to farmers with 1950s weaponry defending their homes