When we first started using explosives in warfare, they were so volatile that people had to carry them right up to the fortification they wanted to destroy and gently place them beside it, which was ridiculous. Eventually we developed explosives that you could actually shoot out of a gun or drop from a flying machine, but they were still completely at the mercy of ballistics, so we carpet-bombed everything near the target in the hopes that a few would hit it, which was undesirable in at least two ways. Only recently have we finally begun to make serious use of "smart" munitions able to steer toward their targets and strike with precision, but it seems like even before the whole world has made that transition, we may move on to these "loitering" munitions, which can manoeuvre semi-autonomously, execute complex behaviours, and wait for the ideal moment to strike. The obvious countermeasure to these is jamming, and so it's only a matter of time before they become fully autonomous.
This is scary from the standpoint of people who would rather not be bombed, but it's interesting conceptually, isn't it? Back in antiquity you had soldiers throwing javelins, and since the soldier was obviously the weak link there, we just made the javelins ever more independent and ever more remote. It's hard to explain, but I feel a kind of wistful fondness when I imagine how we may one day have munitions so independent that they can keep fighting each other forever after all of us have died, bombs like moths whose lives are spent in larval darkness dreaming of the moment when they can finally soar away in a noble adult body that has only days to live.
