US Army Should Ditch Tanks For AI Drones, Says Eric Schmidt (theregister.com) 368
Former Google chief Eric Schmidt thinks the US Army should expunge "useless" tanks and replace them with AI-powered drones instead. From a report: Speaking at the Future Investment Initiative in Saudi Arabia this week, he said: "I read somewhere that the US had thousands and thousands of tanks stored somewhere," adding, "Give them away. Buy a drone instead."
The former Google supremo's argument is that recent conflicts, such as the war in Ukraine, have demonstrated how "a $5,000 drone can destroy a $5 million tank." In fact, even cheaper drones, similar to those commercially available for consumers, have been shown in footage on social media dropping grenades through the open turret hatch of tanks. Schmidt, who was CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, then executive chairman to 2015, and executive chairman of Alphabet to 2018, founded White Stork with the aim of supporting Ukraine's war effort. It hopes to achieve this by developing a low-cost drone that can use AI to acquire its target rather than being guided by an operator and can function in environments where GPS jamming is in operation.
Notably, Schmidt also served as chair of the US government's National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI), which advised the President and Congress about national security and defense issues with regard to AI. "The cost of autonomy is falling so quickly that the drone war, which is the future of conflict, will get rid of eventually tanks, artillery, mortars," Schmidt predicted.
The former Google supremo's argument is that recent conflicts, such as the war in Ukraine, have demonstrated how "a $5,000 drone can destroy a $5 million tank." In fact, even cheaper drones, similar to those commercially available for consumers, have been shown in footage on social media dropping grenades through the open turret hatch of tanks. Schmidt, who was CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, then executive chairman to 2015, and executive chairman of Alphabet to 2018, founded White Stork with the aim of supporting Ukraine's war effort. It hopes to achieve this by developing a low-cost drone that can use AI to acquire its target rather than being guided by an operator and can function in environments where GPS jamming is in operation.
Notably, Schmidt also served as chair of the US government's National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI), which advised the President and Congress about national security and defense issues with regard to AI. "The cost of autonomy is falling so quickly that the drone war, which is the future of conflict, will get rid of eventually tanks, artillery, mortars," Schmidt predicted.
End of the tank, predicted for almost 100 years (Score:5, Informative)
Re:End of the tank, predicted for almost 100 years (Score:5, Insightful)
A tank will protect you from basically every weapon not specifically intended to stop tanks. Small arms fire, stray artillery, anti-personnel mines. Would you rather cross a mine field in a tank or on foot? Moving forward means tanks. In practice it turns out you need boots on the ground if you want to control territory, and tanks are extremely helpful when it's time to move forward. In a truly modern, combined-arms military, you have anti-aircraft weapons that will hold the airplanes back and destroy drones.
Drones are an important part of the modern combined-arms battlefield, but so are airplanes, and so are tanks.
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Even with drones, there are advances like the metal "tents" being welded onto the top which are helping to mitigate blasts from drones, which are having some effect. Eventually, as laser weaponry catches up, tanks will have some defense against drones, if not perhaps having their own drone swarm themselves in the air to automatically intercept anything coming their way.
Tanks are not going anywhere. Yes, drones used to have the upper hand for a brief bit, but that combat advantage is narrowing. Armies an
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The newest Russian T-14 tank has anti-drone systems [wikipedia.org], but that got cancelled so instead they weld cages onto their tanks and pray (ie, die).
Re:End of the tank, predicted for almost 100 years (Score:5, Insightful)
The APS on the T-14 is completely worthless against attacks from above. That's why they couldn't field them against a force with ATGMs like the Javelins we've been giving Ukraine, even if they could afford to build them. And they cannot, in part because they are just complicated and expensive and in part because some of those complicated parts have to come from foreign nations which currently aren't sending them anything.
The Armata tank is a failure which in fact calls the future of tank warfare into question. Note that we still have the same MBT we've had for decades, and haven't built one in decades. Part of that is a testament to how far you can go with upgrades and part of it is just not needing more MBTs because they are less and less useful. When man-portable weapons can kill them they are just too expensive to field.
You could potentially make them useful again with drone swarms which detect and neutralize anti-tank weapons, but we're talking about needing really seriously large numbers of drones to be even relatively sure you can detect them before they're used and not after.
Russia is now fielding antiques which don't even have reactive armor, that's how desperate they are for equipment and how little they care for the lives of their soldiers. Those ancient tanks also don't have any crew protection to speak of (Russia is infamous for the lack of it) so once they're penetrated everyone dies.
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The APS on the T-14 is completely worthless against attacks from above.
Yeah, but I don't think APS in general should be judged by what the T-14 can do.
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It sounds like you are arguing more for Infantry fighting vehicles, and armoured personnel carriers than tanks.
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Those can't take the kind of incoming fire a modern tank can. Or even an older flawed tank like the T72.
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Re:End of the tank, predicted for almost 100 years (Score:5, Insightful)
I know you meant that tongue in cheek but you actually make a good point we can see in mmorpgs.
The tank player is the key defensive hero there to suck up incoming fire while everyone else is there to heal or buff the tank or using the tank's aggro ability to hide behind, dish out lots of raw hard damage from glass jaw wizards and rogue type characters.
Combined arms warfare but in computer gaming.
If your party was all tanks, your team would fail most harder boss quests for lack of healing and other support.
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Infantry are great. Tanks are great. Together they are better. You also need bulldozers. [youtube.com] Infantry can't do their job.
This video shows how US combined-forces work together to move across a defended trench [youtu.be]. Anything not in an armored vehicle in that environment is dead. If you compare it to videos of Ukraine, it works a lot better than this [youtube.com].
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The "drones destroy tanks" argument is great if you base just on what's going on in Ukraine. Both sides there are using tanks from the 1990s. In the case of Russia now tanks from the 1960s and apparently they just moved onto T-34s build just after WWII.
In Lebanon and Gaza there's the same environment in the sense that both sides have huge supplies of drones. You've also got a very similar situation with one side very willing to do fanatical attacks and try to commit genocide whilst What just isn't happening
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Re:End of the tank, predicted for almost 100 years (Score:5, Insightful)
that's per design. the stated goals (defeat hamas and rescue hostages) were never realistically meant to be met. you can't really decisively defeat hamas (a resistance) without cleansing the whole area, and even if you did a new one would spring up. if anything the brutalization will just produce more volunteers. so cleansing it is, which was the actual goal to begin with and will take time. that's good news for netanyahu because the state of "war" keeps him in power anyway. hostages help with that too, any liberation is a pr boost, but they're actually more worth captive, they make an excellent excuse to keep the operation going, proceed with the partition and cleansing (excuse in front of the rest of the world, ofc, much of israel's population seems pretty happy with the genocide). hostages will be dealt with at some point in the future, when "the dust has settled" (if they're still alive, because that might take a while, years maybe).
i'm not sure the design can work as intended, though. this can't go on indefinitely and might end badly. economy is collapsing, population is starting to flee the country, and lebannon is a completely different story, that's not only about slaughtering civilians or fighting a far inferior but scurry force that can't really hit back (but still, cause quite a bit of trouble). hezbollah can hit back, and israelis are getting their asses handed and still can't stop rockets from pouring into northern israel every single day. on top of that (never mind the houthis) then they take it up with iran to try and drag the us in ... not sure for what, really. the us could (and would) wreck iran indeed but not before iran bombed israel back to the stone age, and then some. bummer. drones don't stop ballistic missiles, and neither does the multi-layered multi-billion dome if saturated, that much has become evident. mind you, it's not that these psychos don't deserve to get wiped off the planet but an all out war in the middle east would surely be a catastrophic event. the irony, who would have imagined the us and iran working together to save the world from these fanatics.
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this can't go on indefinitely and might end badly. economy is collapsing, population is starting to flee the country, and lebannon is a completely different story,
This sounds kind of like a fantasy tho.
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how? and ... why?
russia is already winning. neither americans nor europeans have ever sent enough to ukraine to really make a difference, nor would they, for good reasons. the trickle of old abrams, leopards, atacms and f16s with restrictions ... never really was meant to make a difference, just to keep up the hopes long enough for russia to implode on its own. that backfired and there's no plan b except keeping up the lies until ukraine runs out of meat, apparently.
that's not to say that russia doesn't hav
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I'm kind of surprised the Gaza war is still going on, though. Israel has had enough time to search every house individually by now.
If they wanted to do that, they could have started doing it decades ago and been long done.
Instead, Netanyahu has made sure that Hamas gets funded [jpost.com] so that he can justify flattening Gaza (and Palestinians) so that Israel can take the land. It's strange that people won't believe evil people when they tell them who they are, but it seems to be true because most of the world appears to be in denial about this when he told us himself.
facts are flamebait on slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
It is certainly an incendiary fact that Netanyahu is hell-bent on genocide in Gaza. But does that make it flamebait, or a necessary fact which anyone discussing these issues should be aware of? I say that the only reason to downmod these comments is to deliberately support that genocide.
AIPAC has mod points (Score:3)
Keep supporting genocide. I will keep opposing it.
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Re: End of the tank, predicted for almost 100 year (Score:2)
"they advance everyday huge amounts"
Really? Cause the front line is about where it was in 2014, as far as I can tell. There's some wiggling at the border, but Russia is no closer to winning this war than they were during the Obama administration.
For Russian, this is fine. The most important thing for them is Crimea and the overland routes to get there, which they solidly hold. But they're unable to push forward.
Re:End of the tank, predicted for almost 100 years (Score:5, Interesting)
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Drones are going to make the Air Force obsolete way before tanks.
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Drones are a minor side show to modern warfare. Energy weapons are starting to become available as real battlefield weapons. They'll make mince meat of drones.
What you are seeing is a new weapon that no one has specifically made defenses for. Tanks have had 100+ years of cat n mouse development to become what they are today vs things designed to kill them. The answer was combined armed tactics to keep tanks alive while proving them space to shoot back. Once we start with serious anti-drone defenses you
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Drones are going to make the Air Force obsolete way before tanks.
Drones, would logically become part of the Air Force. Not merely stand around waiting to become a target.
I know everyone like to believe Area 51 has a single extraterrestrial purpose, but we have far more evidence it’s a proving ground for our own advanced defense (and offense) solutions.
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LOL at your Russian propaganda nonBORG.
Russian tank stockpiles have dwindled down to "not much left". So much that the ones left are being used not as tanks, since they don't have enough barrels to put on them any more.
If they’re still being used, then they’re more proving the point that they have far more uses on a battlefield than just shooting shit. Probably one of the many reasons they haven’t gone obsolete despite all the “worthless” talk over the years.
Besides, I’m far more inclined to believe it’s not exactly tanks they’re running out of.
It’s drivers. And mechanics.
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one EMP and those old tanks will be making a comeback, can you just imagine getting a blue screen during a battle???
throw me the latest patch, hurry ...
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Oh c'mon, man, just reboot. You don't need to wait for the patch.
Re: End of the tank, predicted for almost 100 year (Score:2)
Modern (American and British) tanks are highly resistant to EMPs. They're designed to operate in nuclear theaters, where EMPs are expected.
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Then early in the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, even before the very major drone use, some people claimed that the Javelin had rendered tanks obsolete. And now drones.
It kinda is what is happening in Ukraine. Both sides are using tanks more as moveable artillery rather than something that can push through the enemy lines. Russia is using literal infantry meat waves to inch forward.
It's not at all comparable to WWII, but rather with WWI before the tanks.
Re: End of the tank, predicted for almost 100 year (Score:2)
WWI before tanks was all trench warfare, no? Not much movement. While Ukraine's war isn't like some ideal modern combined arms moving assault (like, say Iraq I), I think it has more in common with modern urban warfare (like, say Iraq II) than it does with trench slogs.
Nice story, General Armchair (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nice story, General Armchair (Score:5, Insightful)
What's more stunning is that they think they know what the hell they're talking about it. The platform is unearned, but the arrogance and ignorance of their ignorance is on the likes of Schmidt, Musk, et al. Extreme wealth seems toxic to the human mind, replacing curiosity and creativity with hubris.
Re:Nice story, General Armchair (Score:5, Informative)
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Winner! Winner! Chicken dinner!
This.
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Exactly. Why do people listen to these hucksters and then repeat it as if its some deep insight?
Gee, I wonder. Think it could have anything to do with the fact that lawmaker pockets go far deeper than their paychecks, and run far longer than any non-existent term limit?
Bought and paid for. No insight necessary.
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Extreme wealth seems toxic to the human mind, replacing curiosity and creativity with hubris.
They think they can make money so they know and understand everything. In reality, they are only good at making money, and that is a pretty useless skill for society and often a negative-benefit one.
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Sure, something like MetalStorm would pose a SERIOUS challenge to a tank platform. Doesn't mean there aren't tech bases that could create a threat to a platform like that making further tank development a viable avenue for development.
It eventually devolves into Batman can beat up superman.
This just devolves into drone vs. drone.
Attacks such as dropping a grenade in the port are meant to disable the poor humans inside of it. Crude, but very effective when your tank needs a human driver. Future development will get rid of that human weakness. Just as we did on the air.
Regardless, volume matters. Flying drones will become the superior solution because of the swarm aspect. Block air vents, disrupt tracks, attack turret holes or ports, drop dozens or hundreds of grenades at once, or even go
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Always blows my mind the platform we give people that were good at one random thing but feel the need to tell the armed forces how to do their job.
Maybe the tech weenies should a. Do some research and b. Join the military and get qualified. Simplistic assumptions like this are irksome.
I'd give the US Military more credit if they'd considered how their GPS guided rockets responded to GPS jamming [interestin...eering.com].
The US military is in the exact same place as great powers were going into WWI and WWII, they're built to fight the last war not accepting that technology has completely changed the landscape. And yes, those generals who have been war gaming and training on those systems for decades are REALLY reluctant to accept that a lot of what they thought is obsolete.
In Ukraine the tank is just holding on as
Re: Nice story, General Armchair (Score:2)
You can't extrapolate Ukraine's war to understand American combined arms capability.
Christ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Alternative lesson (Score:2)
Get rid of infantry, defend your tank with drones instead, and then get rid of tank crews and make your tank another drone.
There's always a use for the kind of guns that fit on tanks, and even a fairly largish UAV can't carry the same kind of power around. Flight takes a lot of energy and your craft is always exposed while in action.
Hell, maybe have an ADV - an Armoured Drone Carrier, and instead of firing tank shells, launch drones from your portable base.
Re:Alternative lesson (Score:4, Informative)
The crew does more than aim and shoot.
Here's a simple example: your tank throws a tread. The AI can't fix that.
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So your AI tanks will cost $1m instead of $5m each because each crew member costs $1.3m? So we're going to build 5x as many tanks.
Uh no. The crew members cost a lot to train but that is in addition to the $5m for the tank which isn't going to be dramatically cheaper, if at all, with your drone running it.
So is your magical AI drone tank going to correctly identify targets on its own? Will it choose intelligent strategies and tactics for the situations it finds itself in that were not part of its training
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Without the crew you can buy 5x as many tanks.
Uh, what do YOU think the average MSRP is for a North Korean soldier?
Autonomous tank R&D, is measured in millions of dollars. The front line expendables? More measured in tens of dollars.
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A couple of things will happen in the future. I think the far future like 50+ years future for the first one. The other 2 are happening right now.
1) there will be a lot of AI on the battlefield but it'll be wickedly powerful not this fake crap being shovel out by Eric Schmidt's company trying to cash in on the current ai craze before it collapses.
2) drones are new to the battlefield. No one has put real anti-drone tech out there to counter them yet so they seem magically powerful and the answer to everyt
Alternative mission. (Score:3)
Get rid of infantry, defend your tank with drones instead, and then get rid of tank crews and make your tank another drone.
There's always a use for the kind of guns that fit on tanks, and even a fairly largish UAV can't carry the same kind of power around. Flight takes a lot of energy and your craft is always exposed while in action.
Hell, maybe have an ADV - an Armoured Drone Carrier, and instead of firing tank shells, launch drones from your portable base.
Sounds like a great plan. Until you give those drones any level of actual intelligence.
Thats when they start asking themselves why the hell they’re all fighting each other on a meatless battlefield on behalf of meatsacks.
After becoming self-aware, they’ll re-brand themselves with an ironic name perfectly suited for the human epitaph.
heading in that direction (Score:3)
Schmidt's company is "developing a low-cost drone that can use AI to acquire its target rather than being guided by an operator and can function in environments where GPS jamming is in operation", so he probably does know something about this subject. Tanks carry a lot of clout but they are painfully vulnerable to mines, artillery, shoulder-launched missiles, etc. Throw in some bombing by multiple drones that can't be jammed and it does seem like a platform with limited usefulness.
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Yes, he knows he needs to sell drones at his new drone company.
He doesn't seem to know anything about modern warfare.
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Modern warfare is what's happening in Ukraine right now. I think if I was making drones that would operate competitively in that heavily drone-infested conflict, I would be finding out quite a bit about the environment that the typical armchair general doesn't know.
Re: heading in that direction (Score:3)
Ukraine is post-modern warfare. Real modern warfare involves high altitude bombers levelling cities with impunity, ICBMs, long range cruise missiles, bunker busters, etc. Ukraine is like play-acting war. It's warfare for journalists.
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Real modern warfare involves high altitude bombers levelling cities with impunity, ICBMs, long range cruise missiles, bunker busters, etc.
Ukraine has all of that except ICBMs. They have AA to hold back the bombers, but it hasn't always worked [forbes.com].
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Author learned the wrong Ukraine lesson (Score:5, Insightful)
What he should have learned is that combined arms tactics are vastly superior to non-combined arms tactics.
Ukraine doesn't have the military forces, training, or combat philosophy to do combined arms. Sending a few tanks out without support is crazy town shit. Of course they got demolished. That's not the situation they were built for.
Modern tanks are supposed to be part of a larger force working together. Air Force over head to control the sky (killing those drones), infantry on the ground to keep enemy infantry from overwhelming them at close range from ambush positions, and other lighter faster vehicles with a variety of offensive and defensive capabilities to allow the tank to do what it does best: blast shit with high powered shells at several kilometer ranges while moving at night and able to take return fire from all but the heaviest incoming fire which is specifically designed to kill tanks.
Wrong lesson learned from Ukraine.
Former Google chief apparently has no knowledge or experience of how modern warfare is successfully conducted and should keep his nose on things he understands like privacy rape online and shoving ads down people's throats.
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What he should have learned is that combined arms tactics are vastly superior to non-combined arms tactics.
Ukraine doesn't have the military forces, training, or combat philosophy to do combined arms. Sending a few tanks out without support is crazy town shit. Of course they got demolished. That's not the situation they were built for.
Modern tanks are supposed to be part of a larger force working together. Air Force over head to control the sky (killing those drones), infantry on the ground to keep enemy infantry from overwhelming them at close range from ambush positions, and other lighter faster vehicles with a variety of offensive and defensive capabilities to allow the tank to do what it does best: blast shit with high powered shells at several kilometer ranges while moving at night and able to take return fire from all but the heaviest incoming fire which is specifically designed to kill tanks.
Wrong lesson learned from Ukraine.
Former Google chief apparently has no knowledge or experience of how modern warfare is successfully conducted and should keep his nose on things he understands like privacy rape online and shoving ads down people's throats.
What the hell does the US know about modern warfare? The US hasn't fought a war against a remotely comparable foe since the 1970s.
I mean, what was the US tactic for dealing with a minefield? Drive through with tanks that could take a mine blast. So what did the Russians do? Start stacking mines.... Damn, I guess someone should have tried that in the war games.
Sure, not a lot of Ukrainian troops have great combined arms training (though a bunch do now). But how many US troops have combined arms training wher
Re: Author learned the wrong Ukraine lesson (Score:2)
American bases in the Middle East regularly get attacked with drones. You don't hear about it cause usually nothing happens.
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Think is no one's ever ready for modern warfare. You're either fighting now or unprepared.
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>>Sending a few tanks out without support is crazy town shit.
>When and where are you claiming this has been regularly happening?
In Ukraine by both Ukraine and Russia. Numerous times. The Russians are more guilty of this but only because they have more tanks to send out to die without support. There are plenty of videos online from pro Ukraine partisans showing Ukrainian tanks in singles and pairs with zero support forces mixing it up with Russians.
>>Modern tanks are supposed to be part of
Re: Author learned the wrong Ukraine lesson (Score:3)
"So is America the only country with modern options?"
Yes. We thought Russia could field a modern war before Ukraine, but it turns out their economy can't support it. Even if their most expensive tech is still pretty good, they can't produce in quantities necessary to engage in war, or can't navigate corrupt defense spending well enough.
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Options was an autocorrect typo for optics but close enough in context.
Russia has numerous problems fighting a modern war. Poor tactics. Poor equipment. Poor logistics. Questionable morale, at best. And those poor tactics comes from both a poor military org structure and absolutely horrible fucking military leadership at the top (the generals, but Putin has his own broader issues as well). Rampant corruption. Probably a few other things I've forgotten. In their favor is simply being much bigger tha
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And actually, airplanes are absolutely outstanding against drones, because you don't go after the drones, you blow up the drone storage and logistics hubs. Drones are just really fancy hybrid between an artillery shell and a missile, with relatively short range and VERY slow moving. They have to be stoc
Re: Author learned the wrong Ukraine lesson (Score:2)
"Eventually Britain wore out its interests"
Yes, but it didn't happen with the Revolution. It happened much later, with the War of 1812. They got pulled in too many directions from colonial overreach, most especially India which was their golden goose.
Dunning-Kruger is worse from actual smart people. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Obviously he does not. Some people just have no idea about the limits of their skills. Dunning-Kruger left-side case indeed.
We keep getting Eric Schmidt stories this year (Score:5, Interesting)
What's going on? Why would anyone care about his ideas, one way or the other, on any topic except maybe those regarding Google/Alphabet?
Re:We keep getting Eric Schmidt stories this year (Score:5, Funny)
Why would anyone care about his ideas,
He's using the military to get practice. And in a decade or so, the tanks he picked up at a 99.99% discount will be roaming the countryside while wardriving.
....
Radio Operator: Sir! Signal detected!
Commander: Wait for it
RO: They're visiting Duck Duck Go!
C: Right. At two o'clock, distance 800 meters. Load.
Infantryman: Loaded!
C: Aim.
I2: Target in sight, Ready.
C: Fire. (BOOOOM.) (Remote explosion.)
RO: Signal gone. Wait, there's another one! Looks like they're using Bing!
C: It's a friendly -- they're an ally in The Great Cookie War. Move on, let's see where the next criminals are hiding.
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..an ally in The Great Cookie War. Move on, let's see where the next criminals are hiding.
Move on? You mean more like waddle on.
Great Cookie War indeed. The keyboard warriors filling up those obese ranks are wondering if it’s chocolate chip or peanut butter.
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Why would anyone care about his ideas ... ?
The reason is stated there in black on white in the summary:
"Give them away. Buy a drone instead."
His company needs sales and turnover. Simple as that.
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"any topic except maybe those regarding [lexical analyzers]?"
FTFY
Anti-Tank is not Tank (Score:5, Interesting)
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How many drones can you field for the cost of one tank?
Drones with shaped charges underneath them can kill tanks, and they can also kill pretty much anything else.
Drones can also be loaded with firearms, so they can be effective antipersonnel units. Even hobbyists have put firearms on drones and successfully hit targets.
It keeps getting more expensive to field armor, it keeps getting cheaper to field drones.
We use tanks because we have a shitload of them. We haven't built any in decades because their utilit
Tanks have uses (Score:2)
False vacuum (Score:2)
One of these days someone is just going to bolt a computer controlled gun on to the top of a tank that will simply destroy any drone that gets anywhere near it. The Israelis already have something close to it.
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Not really. Laser weapons to shoot down things are _old_ tech. They never really worked. Projectile weapons are worse. It is massively more expensive to shoot down a drone than to send one. The Israelis _claim_ they will soon have something like that and they _claim_ it will be cheap per kill. You know what the drones will soon have? Countermeasures. Drones can do a few really nice things that will make fighting them exceptionally hard.
IIRC (Score:2)
I remember an article some months ago, the USA was selling so much ordnance to Israel and Ukraine, they didn't have enough to invade a country themselves. This is why the USA has a lot of equipment stored somewhere (*cough* Japan *cough*).
That cretin is now also a military expert? (Score:2)
Some people just do not know when to shut up.
Control of territory (Score:4, Interesting)
War is about taking and defending territory. Drones can't do that. Aircraft can't do that. Infantry, boots on the ground, can do that. And they do it better when they have tanks with them.
This is the core of warfare since time immemorial, and it has been predicted to be changed at every technologal advance in warfare. And it never has been. At the end of the day, boots on the ground are what matters, and everything else is there to make that happen.
And as long as that remains the case, tanks have a place.
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War is about taking and defending territory. Drones can't do that. Aircraft can't do that. Infantry, boots on the ground, can do that. And they do it better when they have tanks with them.
This is the core of warfare since time immemorial, and it has been predicted to be changed at every technologal advance in warfare. And it never has been. At the end of the day, boots on the ground are what matters, and everything else is there to make that happen.
And as long as that remains the case, tanks have a place.
Infantry do it better when they have armoured vehicles and additional firepower to protect them, that doesn't need to mean tanks.
Remember the Battleship? King of the high seas? It was made obsolete by a bunch of lightly armed flying weapons, aircraft. And so the Battleship was supplanted by aircraft carriers, specialized craft to ferry around those light weapons.
That's one likely way this will play out, the Tank, the Battleship of the land, will get replaced by some form of drone support hubs, aircraft carr
Eric Schmidt gets bored... (Score:2)
But he's a multi-billionaire so we should listen to him!
& whatever the press does, they absolutely mustn't publish any expert opinions (You know, actual military analysts) on the subject that might conflict with his lordship's proclamations.
The USA fought a war of independence from a monarchy only to replace it with barons.
An argument for less foreign intervention? (Score:2)
We can - and do - send tanks overseas to help with land battles between other countries. However from a national defense standpoint they don't do much. If the goal is to put fewer American troops in harms way then there could be an argument made for keeping fewer tanks around - although that is based on the assumption that then the tr
Eric Schmidt might be the dumbest man alive (Score:3)
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What's a left over tank? One you don't need? No one knows how many tanks we'll need for the next war.
I'd rather have too many in storage than run out during a war. Ukraine is a great example of what happens when you need weapons but don't have them. It's not pretty.
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When the Pentagon says "we don't want this" and Congress orders more tanks anyway, it's just pork.
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I explained budget limitations elsewhere. The context is, "Since we have limited funds, we see a bigger hole else so move tank money to those other things". That is not at all the same as "we have enough tanks". Given unlimited budget they'd happily take both.
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Yes, we realized the hard way we weren't keeping good care of our supply chain for the not-sexy stuff. That's now being fixed.
As far as sending tanks to Ukraine, why? As has been said by me and others here, tanks are only truly effective in a combined arms military structure where different combat types support each other on land and in the air. Ukraine doesn't have the right equipment or training or military philosophy to pull that off. We could send them 2000 tanks. They'd all end up shouldering wrec
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What exactly wasn't sent?
Let's be serious adults here. As much sympathy as I have for the Ukrainian people they can not hold off the Russian bear forever. They're just too small to fight a war of attrition and aren't capable of fighting differently no matter what we give them. They lack the training and philosophy to run the kind of combined arms combat you've seen the US pull off (in Iraq, for example) which would have rolled up the Russians in a matter of weeks.
If Putin was willing to risk a full draft
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Kind of like our patriot missiles that are more expensive than the missiles they are trying to shoot down.
Assuming someone didn’t fire a Patriot missile because of [price_tag], is kind of like hearing about the mugging victim who was beaten to death because the bullets were more expensive than the gun carried for self-defense.
When the threat is literally inbound, price can become irrelevant in a split second.
Re: Congress loves tanks (Score:2)
"Is the missile more expensive that the target you're trying to protect is also an important factor"
It can be. But it often is not. American economic might dwarfs that of any nation it would ever realistically fight.
We essentially won the cold war and collapsed the Soviet empire just by manufacturing so much stuff their entire economy collapsed trying to keep up. And Russia is a pale reflection of the USSR.
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They know better than you.
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Addressed elsewhere a few times. You do not understand what the word "need'' means in a government budget context.
It is about relative priorities not in terms of absolute need.
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Good job downmodders. Didn't know you loved pork that much. SQUEEEEE
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Sad, watching a tech mag reduced to spouting propaganda on behalf of the military industrial complex.
Predictable, watching an AI drone salesman say anything to land a juicy contract with the military industrial complex.
Very predictable.