Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt says future wars will be fought by AI drones and calls tanks ‘useless’

Eric Schmidt

Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt said future wars will be fought by AI-powered drones, and urged the US military to do away with what he called “useless” tanks.

Speaking at the Future Investment Initiative in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, Schmidt said the low cost of automated drones will soon make traditional forms of combat obsolete.

“The world has an awful lot of tanks. Those tanks are largely useless now. A $5,000 drone can destroy a $5,000,000 tank,” he added.

“I read somewhere that the US had thousands and thousands of tanks stored somewhere,” he added. “Give them away. Buy a drone instead. In fact, buy 10, buy 20, buy 50, buy 100.”

For almost a decade, Schmidt has advised the US government and military on technology. He became chairman of the Department of Defense’s Innovation Board in 2016 and has chaired the US National Security Commission for Artificial Intelligence.

He’s also working on a startup that builds AI attack drones to help Ukraine. Speaking at Stanford University in April, he said the goal of the startup, named White Stork, was to use AI “in complicated, powerful ways.”

Schmidt is working on the project with former Udacity and Kittyhawk CEO Sebastian Thrun. Forbes previously reported Schmidt was interested in “kamikaze drones,” a broad term for unmanned systems packed with explosives that detonate upon hitting their targets. They are also known as loitering munitions because they can linger above an area before descending on their targets.

“The cost of autonomy has fallen so quickly that the drone war, which is the future of conflict, will get rid of eventually tanks, artillery and mortars,” said Schmidt in Saudi Arabia this week.

Asked about the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Schmidt said he had been surprised by innovations in drone technology. “If you look at the drone tactics, the drone tactics are changing every day,” he said.

Ukraine has also developed its own homemade drone program, producing sophisticated systems for land, air, and sea missions.

Drone warfare has been a dominating element of the Ukraine conflict, with cheap first-person-view drones threatening everything that moves, from vehicles to aircraft to individual soldiers.

Even top tanks, such as the Russian T-90 and American armor, have succumbed to this threat. Tank crews have been forced to adapt, employing extensive explosive reactive armor on tanks and other armored vehicles and equipping them with cage armor of varying sophistication to shield them from emerging battlefield threats.

While drones have made the battlespace more transparent and more dangerous, conventional warfighting elements remain for the time being. Troops are being more cautious, but tanks are still active, armored fighting vehicles have repeatedly proven their worth, and artillery continues to be king. However, as unmanned technology matures, especially with the introduction of AI, that could change.