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Originally Posted by Webstral
So where are these kinds of defenses when 5th ID jumps off from its starting point?
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Good question. I think the answer has mostly to do with troop density. Given the massive casualties sustained by all sides by 2000, there simply aren't enough warm bodies anymore to man anything approaching a continuous front. This development, in part, explains the rise of the cantonment system. Only a few food producing areas and surviving manufacturing centers are worth devoting significant manpower to defending actively. Cantonments would be heavily fortified in the manner which you described. However, there would be large, relatively unmanned gaps between cantonments. These gaps are mostly likely what the 5th ID passed through on its "raid" deep into PACT territory.
Such gaps may have been covered by mines, but without adequate infantry to cover those minefields, they would be fairly easy to traverse. I'm sure that many surviving tanks c.2000 would be equiped with mine rollers or plows or fitted with ad hoc devices designed to do the same thing (I'm thinking along the lines of the Cullen hedgerow cutters of the WWII Normandy campaign). Most gaps would be screened by picket forces or covered by routine patrols but these forces would be tasked primarily with providing warning of enemy offensive operations and perhaps delaying attacking forces while mobile reserves are rushed to the scene.
Anyhow, certain valuable areas would have extensive active defensive works while other areas would be largely undefended or have only passive defenses. I'm sure that there would be miles and miles of old, abandoned trench systems and other defensive works. But without troops there maintaining them, they would be little more than speed bumps.
In a nutshell, there just aren't enough troops to man and defend the sorts of trench systems that were the hallmark of WWI.