>Maybe one day war will be less about killing people, and more of a battle between countries' best engineers.
When two robots fight each other, it's not because the other robot is the target, it's because it's an obstacle between them and the human targets that will actually affect the war.
This reminds me of Philip K. Dick's "The Second Variety" that I recently read. (Not that I'm trying to make a prescient political-statement, just sharing a fun short-story you might be interested in.)
Why are their targets other AI fighter pilots? That's a very, very big assumption. Can we safely assume that the AI pilot won't target buildings/ships/etc.? Even if we assume a well-behaved AI, why should we assume that AI fighter pilots will target military targets? Can we say for certain that they won't be controlled by a malicious despot?
What when one AI pilot generalizes it's knowledge on enemy airplanes and finds out that bombing an airplane factory destroys multiple targets with minimum risk to itself?
Not necessarily. Generally, a conventional war ends when one side surrenders, usually because it knows it can't win and wants to minimize further losses. If we reach a point where unmanned weapons are the ultimate tool for destruction, then it makes sense that by the time the AI combatants reach a point where they could target enemy populations, the war would already be decided, and the nation about to have its people killed would surrender. There will be exceptions, but it would be no worse than current war, and at least potentially be better.
That is of course assuming that the most efficient strategy to achieve a surrender doesn't actually end up being a bypass of enemy AI and direct targeting of human populations. This would only be possible if there's a huge mismatch between offensive and defensive capability. But then you end up with a MAD situation similar to what we have with nukes.
That said, I expect that the flip-side is that this tech would ultimately make a guerilla war by a local population against an occupying force very very ugly for the guerillas.
That would essentially mean two nations agreeing to resolve their intractable diplomatic differences with trial-by-combat, and to abide by the results. It's a lovely notion, but in practice you can't really force a nation to change policy without a palpable threat to their population and/or infrastructure.
So it boils down not to robots killing robots, but robots killing humans, while other robots try to stop them.
Maybe one day war will be less about killing people, and more of a battle between countries' best engineers.
Maybe I'm just optimistic, but I think robot wars would be a hell of a lot better than real wars.