Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt Is Working on a Secret Military Drone Project

Post by dilyevsky » Tue, Jan 09, 2024, 9:21 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #8

csdvrx wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My take on this is that lacking direct combat experience everything the Americans (and the West more generally) will come up with in terms of drones will be hugely inferior to whatever the Russians are now building So what? As someone famous said, "Quantity is a quality on its own"

Don't think that the West will go for "quantity over quality" in its arms' race with China/Russia, it has stopped doing that for at least 30 years (since they scrapped most of the Cold War-related arms industry).

Post by paganel » Tue, Jan 09, 2024, 9:24 PM UTC

PoignardAzur wrote: post #7

paganel wrote: post #4

He was heavily mentioning drones in the Foreign Affairs piece [1] he wrote in the spring of 2023: "Innovation Power - Why Technology Will Define the Future of Geopolitics" > Drones offer distinct advantages over traditional weapons: they are smaller and cheaper, offer unmatched surveillance capabilities, and reduce soldiers’ risk exposure. Marines in urban warfare, for example, could be accompanied by microdrones tha…

There are so many assumptions packed in that post it feels weird to try to unpack them; eg, the implication the "local" Ukrainian equipment would be by default inferior to Russian equipment, which doesn't seem obvious at all to me. But empirically speaking, the idea that Russian equipment will be better than OTAN equipment because of their combat experience is pretty bold considering the current domination of OTAN eq…

Post by okdood64 » Tue, Jan 09, 2024, 9:25 PM UTC

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #9

I worked for a few years in defense and it was the most meaningful work of my career so far but it is painfully slow and entrenched. There is massive opportunity for innovation. I hope he can move the needle- he was on the Defense Innovation Board a while back so he knows.

Post by htrp » Tue, Jan 09, 2024, 9:26 PM UTC

fhub wrote: post #12

PoignardAzur wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are so many assumptions packed in that post it feels weird to try to unpack them; eg, the implication the "local" Ukrainian equipment would be by default inferior to Russian equipment, which doesn't seem obvious at all to me. But empirically speaking, the idea that Russian equipment will be better than OTAN equipment because of their combat experience is pretty bold considering the current domination of OTAN eq…

What is OTAN? NATO?

Post by ziddoap » Tue, Jan 09, 2024, 9:28 PM UTC

fhub wrote: post #12

PoignardAzur wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are so many assumptions packed in that post it feels weird to try to unpack them; eg, the implication the "local" Ukrainian equipment would be by default inferior to Russian equipment, which doesn't seem obvious at all to me. But empirically speaking, the idea that Russian equipment will be better than OTAN equipment because of their combat experience is pretty bold considering the current domination of OTAN eq…

What is OTAN? NATO?