>>64157526
>The issue with guns is rate of fire
This is only true contextually. If we're talking about AA you're right. If your targets are vehicles, personnel, or fortifications, then you simply pack a different gun for each kind of occasion.
>very spammable threats - personnel/suspicious looking light cover/thin skinned vehicles/UAS defense
An HMG-equivalent on CROWS++. An M2 would be traditional. Probably replaced by a laser in this scenario if combatants stop being squeamish about anti-personnel use.
>cheap "armored" threats - lightly armored vehicles/trench lines/tree lines/suspicious looking houses/UGVs/last ditch UAS defense
Turreted 30mm autocannon with twin ammo feeders pumping APIT or radar-fused HE-frag.
>heavily armored threats - enemy direct fire platforms, bunkers
The Gun.
>Lasers don't roll back combat to the pre-missile age.
I don't think they do either. Modern mobility is so high and modern equipment so expensive that truly invulnerable formation densities would be operationally outmaneuvered by slightly more dispersed but attritable equivalents. You still try to chuck as much indirect fire in their direction as possible, but if you want to kill [x] now you blast it with a gun.
I still think we'll see UAS. As you mention, their scouting abilities make them useful, and organic AA will not be impermeable. I think the expectation will be to bring along as many as is practical, expect to lose almost all of them as you close with the enemy. That and in the context of decentralized logistics and field resupply.
