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

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

#71

Post by AlbertCory »

ChumpGPT wrote: post #16

After watching 1000's of Ukrainian drone videos, it's absolutely terrifying for the foot soldier these days. You almost stand zero chance and as for vehicles, it can seriously impact their usefulness. APC's,Tanks become scrap metal from a $500 drone carrying a shaped charge. The US has always depended on air superiority to fight its wars, they are completely unprepared for what facing an enemy with superior air defen…

to anyone interested in on-the-ground reporting:

get on Quora and follow Roland Bartetzko: https://www.quora.com/profile/Roland-Bartetzko

who has actually been in combat (not in Ukraine) and is over in Ukraine right now helping with logistics.

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

#72

Post by throwawayqqq11 »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #40
ChumpGPT wrote: post #16

After watching 1000's of Ukrainian drone videos, it's absolutely terrifying for the foot soldier these days. You almost stand zero chance and as for vehicles, it can seriously impact their usefulness. APC's,Tanks become scrap metal from a $500 drone carrying a shaped charge. The US has always depended on air superiority to fight its wars, they are completely unprepared for what facing an enemy with superior air defen…

Yep. All the gun nuts with delusions of even the threat of a future armed rebellion are absolutely kidding themselves. You don't need an army or tanks or jets or helicopters to lay waste to an armed militia. You just need some bored kids with a few hours of flight sim training and enough drones to make it happen.

The main point gun nuts miss: Power corrupts.

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

#73

Post by petre »

rainworld wrote: post #61
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…

current domination of OTAN equipment in the Ukraine-Russia war Back in the real world: Hangar queens: http://archive.today/2024.01.09-023929/https://www.spiegel.d... Barrel trouble: https://x.com/DcDxii/status/1731800411965645092 Death traps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMX-10_RC#Operational_history And so on. If anything this war is a vindication of the Soviet approach.

They have not been sufficiently trained to man and maintain modern NATO equipment built for a different purpose: combined arms operations. Old Leopard 1 tanks would have been a better choice than Leopard 2.

This is a war that could be won with lots of artillery shells, combined with targeting computers and drone surveillance, highly mobile artillery.

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

#74

Post by ProjectArcturis »

petre wrote: post #47
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…

[flagged]

There may be a problem with this outlook: bio-robots are able to self-replicate.

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

#75

Post by dist-epoch »

adventured wrote: post #58
mckn1ght wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one wins a drone war. A non sequitur with no justification. If you are being attacked with drones, and you don’t have any, you are definitely going to lose that war. This is like how people say nobody wins a nuclear war. Ask Ukraine how they feel about the decision to give up their nukes is going.

Ukraine couldn't use or maintain those nuclear weapons. They had no control over their actual use. So why would Ukraine feel bad about giving them up? It was a huge benefit to get rid of them given the risks and costs associated. They absolutely could not afford to maintain them circa 1991-2021. Not even remotely close. Giving them up was the only thing that made any sense given their extremely low real value. If Ukr…

Surely they could afford maintaining a dozen of them.

> They had no control over their actual use

Assuming they could not bypass the protection, they could still extract the radioactive material and create their own designs.

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

#76

Post by dist-epoch »

adventured wrote: post #54
nerpderp82 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why we should be halting the progression and use of the drones like we are seeing in Ukraine. No one wins a drone war.

The nation that can destroy (or otherwise severely impair) the drone manufacturing/supply/operation capabilities of the opponent, wins a war that heavily includes drones. That's assuming the drones matter that much, which hasn't been demonstrated yet. Drones have not shifted the balance of power in Ukraine v Russia for example. It's no different than blowing up any other kind of weapons supply. You stop the supply, t…

> Drones have not shifted the balance of power in Ukraine v Russia for example.

Because both sides use them.

They made armored attacks impossible for both sides. A tank is detected in 1 minute and destroyed in 10.

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

#77

Post by NelsonMinar »

threeseed wrote: post #38
kramerger wrote: post #6

Maybe it was completely unrelated, but pre-Schmidt Google was nice. Under Schmidt it started its journey towards becoming the creepy stalker it is today. Never liked the guy, and wouldn't surprise me if he is working on landmines targeting children.

Google Adwords pre-dates Schmidt joining. And so it's unfair to blame him for what is an inevitable path once you decide to become an advertising-centric company.

Technically yes, but that version of Adwords was pretty small. The actual Adwords that made the company so successful was called "Adwords Select" at launch, the one with the Vickrey auction. It launched in 2002 after Schmidt was at the company and with a lot of support by him. Particularly when the AOL deal was negotiated. He was certainly part of making it an advertising-centric company but that was by no means his sole doing.

There's plenty of reasons to criticize Schmidt. His role in the collusion to suppress salaries along with Adobe, Apple Inc., Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay was a particular lowlight of his career at Google. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

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

#78

Post by petre »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #74
petre wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

There may be a problem with this outlook: bio-robots are able to self-replicate.

It takes years. They're not mice to replenish in 20 days. And not exactly cheap to build, train and service.

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

#79

Post by greedo »

ChumpGPT wrote: post #16

After watching 1000's of Ukrainian drone videos, it's absolutely terrifying for the foot soldier these days. You almost stand zero chance and as for vehicles, it can seriously impact their usefulness. APC's,Tanks become scrap metal from a $500 drone carrying a shaped charge. The US has always depended on air superiority to fight its wars, they are completely unprepared for what facing an enemy with superior air defen…

Thing is, the US isn't going to attack (with ground forces) until they've thoroughly destroy the enemy with a "superior air defense." Take a look at how the US handled Desert Storm. Over 100K sorties simply leveling anything slightly threatening. Now most militaries can't fight this way, they simply don't have the resources. But the US spends $800B annually on its military.

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

#80

Post by greedo »

cpursley wrote: post #21
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…

> the current domination of OTAN equipment in the Ukraine-Russia war Exactly which OTAN/NATO equipment is "dominating" in that conflict?

I'm assuming you're asking in good faith:

Patriot. NASAMs. SAMP-T and IRIS. All proving themselves at least as good as any Russian SAM system.

ATACMS, GMLRS, HARM, Javelin, TOW, Gepard, PZH-2000, M-777, Paladin, SCALP/STORM, Bradley... The list goes on. Of course the Ukrainians are not being provided with enough equipment and munitions to actually win, but the equipment itself is dominating when used in even a close approximation to sound strategy.

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