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AI The Military United States

US Army Should Ditch Tanks For AI Drones, Says Eric Schmidt (theregister.com) 81

Posted by msmash from the tough-calls dept.
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.

US Army Should Ditch Tanks For AI Drones, Says Eric Schmidt More | Reply

US Army Should Ditch Tanks For AI Drones, Says Eric Schmidt

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  • End of the tank, predicted for almost 100 years (Score:5, Informative)

    by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Thursday October 31, 2024 @08:53PM (#64910541) Homepage
    The tank being obsolete has been predicted on and off for 100 years no. Soon after they were introduced in World War I, people thought that new defensive setups would stop them from being used. In World War II, the bazooka and similar weapons people thought might make the tank obsolete. Then after World War II, those weapons became improved into the RPG-7 and similar. 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. But in all these times, tanks have died to weapons because tanks are still being used because they make sense to use. Both Russia and Ukraine are losing ranks, but they both need to keep using tanks to secure objectives. The idea that drones will replace tanks just doesn't fit with what we are seeing right now.

    • Re:End of the tank, predicted for almost 100 years (Score:5, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Thursday October 31, 2024 @09:09PM (#64910571) Journal
      In theory, an airplane should have made tanks obsolete. They can shoot the tank, and the tank can't shoot back. They do everything a drone can do.

      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.

      • 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

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by quenda ( 644621 )

        It sounds like you are arguing more for Infantry fighting vehicles, and armoured personnel carriers than tanks.

      • 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

        • 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.
      • Electric motorbikes are also an option, they are fast and small. reasonably quite and spread out the attackers. Unfortunately used to great effect by Russia. However it would seem that having a lot of everything is what you need. Lots of tanks, lots of drones, lots of missiles bombs and most importantly lots of men.
        • Yeah and Ukraine uses dune buggies [gzeromedia.com] but they'd rather have tanks. Dune buggies are fasts, but not as fast as a bullet. The only chance they have on the battlefield is to not be seen.
        • According to respectable war analysis group CIT, the motorbike attacks are hugely unsuccessful. Yeah, it looks like in movies, cool guys on loud horses. But reality hits hard, when you have potholes, debree, mud. And you fall and break a leg or jou get the fueltank hit and it explodes between your legs. They die like flies. Motorcycle is far from usable at the frontline.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jythie ( 914043 )
      I think people tend to forget that tanks are more than just targets. They have a good point with the economics, and have for quite some time. The cost to build a tank is orders of magnitudes more than the cost to destroy one, so they think in terms of game pieces where rock beats paper and paper can't do much about rock, but that isn't what paper is for. Drones are, at least so far, not very good weapons for making an actual push. If anything, they fill a roll a lot closer to artillery and perhaps cou

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by brunes69 ( 86786 )

        Drones are going to make the Air Force obsolete way before tanks.

        • 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

      • The battle field is not as simple as destroyed and working. Tanks that are hit are being repaired by both sides in Ukraine. Russia has a special support unit that is responsible to recondition and redeploy armor right near the front line. They estimate about 80% of hit units can be redeployed (I suspect that it is can be used for spare parts or repaired but I am no expert.)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 2TecTom ( 311314 )

      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 ...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Chas ( 5144 )

      How long have they predicted the end of this or that?
      Yet stuff still holds on.
      And drones! GREAT! Ever see how well they work with to much decent interference?
      Not that it STOPS drones.
      But create a hurdle that needs to be overcome.

      Not to mention the benefits of the tank platform tends to make it more versatile a weapon system.
      And more, nothing stops drone from being used IN CONJUNCTION.

      So please try to predict a successor to the technological paradigm....please.

  • Nice story, General Armchair (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Sad_Seraphim ( 5910186 ) on Thursday October 31, 2024 @08:54PM (#64910551)
    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.

    • 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.

    • Remember that Eric Schmidt got his job at Google because he went to Burning Man.

    • 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

  • 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.

    • The crew does more than aim and shoot.

      Here's a simple example: your tank throws a tread. The AI can't fix that.

  • 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.

    • Yes, he knows he needs to sell drones at his new drone company.

      He doesn't seem to know anything about modern warfare.

      • 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.

      • https://www.reuters.com/world/... [reuters.com]

        Ukraine rolls out dozens of AI systems to help its drones hit targets

        KYIV, Oct 30 (Reuters) - Ukraine is using dozens of domestically made AI-augmented systems for its drones to reach targets on the battlefield without being piloted, a senior official said, disclosing new details about the race against Russia to harness automation.

        Systems that use artificial intelligence allow cheap drones carrying explosives to spot or fly to their targets in areas protected by extensiv

  • Life is following art again as in Robert Sheckley's "The Battle".

    The Armageddon War (Stuart Slade) used people, but it was set in 2008 or a bit before.

  • Author learned the wrong Ukraine lesson (Score:4, Informative)

    by iAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 ) on Thursday October 31, 2024 @10:03PM (#64910685)

    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.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      > combined arms tactics are vastly superior to non-combined arms tactics.

      It's a lot like an NBA team, different people and different positions specialize in different things. If a team had only 7-footers, the shorter players on the other team would simply out-maneuver them.

      And if you only have point guards (short players), they can't block tall shooters.

      The most successful teams do well at most positions. Yes, there are exceptions, as usual, but they tend not to stay top for long, perhaps because other t

    • 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

  • Dunning-Kruger is worse from actual smart people. (Score:3)

    by Eunomion ( 8640039 ) on Thursday October 31, 2024 @10:17PM (#64910719)
    Does he not understand that the experience of running Google has damn near zero relevance to military strategy?

  • We keep getting Eric Schmidt stories this year (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Thursday October 31, 2024 @10:26PM (#64910729)

    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?

  • Give the tank a nuclear power source instead of crappy ass diesel (you know the same ones they use on the cloud seeding weather control balloons). Outfit it with the Tesla self-driving system for driving through deer. Add a few autonomy Patches from Boston Dynamics for Fire Control. BAM! You have a self aware defense/attack juggernaut.
  • A drone is a great anti-tank weapon. We have plenty of good anti-tank weapons. Anti-tank weapons cannot replace tanks, because a tank is a multi-role weapon system. It not only destroy things, it sieges enemy fortifications, it takes ground, it defends infantry. Good luck doing that with a DJI Phantom.

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