LONDON -- "A soldier's life is terrible hard" goes the song, and so it remains today, but with some big differences.
Gone are the days of mass ground attacks and usually bloody battles between armies to gain territory. The modern soldier may still be shaped by the key ingredients of order and discipline but his, or her, role has changed fundamentally.
Today's infantryman is no longer just one more name and number in uniform, a piece of cannon fodder. Each one is now, or has to become, a walking high-tech unit, an instant link within a network of super-advanced devices for detecting the enemy and coordinating and delivering, with devastating precision, an effective military response.