There have been many stories describing the advent of robotic warfare: Saberhagen’s brutalist Berserkers and Bolos. The droid armies of Star Wars. The grim, inescapable premise of 'Slaughterbots’, which is now playing out in the fields of Ukraine and the streets of Kherson. (NB: the contents of those links may be disturbing to some.)
Who will win out in this new theatre? Team Red, Team Blue, … or Team Grey?
I (very) vaguely recall reading a UK comic in the '60s (Hotspur?) which had a story about two nations locked in an endless war of robots, with humans trapped in the middle, with no control over the situation (although the protagonists did manage to knock out one side’s controlling AI)
Not a deep exploration, but a bleak vision of an outcome: two rather well-known videos from Dima Fedotov on YouTube: Fortress and Last Day of War.
See also: Metalhead, Black Mirror S4E5 (Netflix 2017). Armed combat robots similar to todays Boston Dynamics’ “robot dogs” remorselessly pursue innocent civilians.
A more positive view of how future warfare might unfold is presented in Patrick Farley’s online comic ‘Spiders’.
In an alternate timeline where Al Gore won the 2000 election, the US army is fighting the war in Afghanistan with the aid of a myriad of insect-like monitor drones monitored by a network of volunteer observers.
The story also involves the use of a controversial gas which, while not toxic, does contain an hallucinogen (MDMA) and… other components that promote a less insular outlook in the religious fanaticism driving the conflict.
Ahhh, now I remember seeing ‘Spiders’ years ago, but I would have had a hard time naming or finding it again without a hint!
Paolo Bacigalupi’s The People of Sand and Slag takes place on a future Earth that’s all one wrecked battlefield - but the humans who survive there have been so drastically altered that they can easily survive The People of Sand and Slag - Wikipedia