Eric Schmidt, the billionaire investor and former CEO of Google, said it’s time for the US military to ditch tanks, artillery and mortars in favor of aerial drones like the ones he’s building to help Ukraine.
“I read somewhere that the US had thousands and thousands of tanks stored somewhere,” he told the Future Investment Initiative in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday.
“Give them. Buy a drone instead.”
Schmidt’s comments were reported by Bloomberg News.
Schmidt was ranked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as the 51st richest person in the world with an estimated fortune of $33.3 billion as of Wednesday.
The former Google boss said the Russia-Ukraine war has shown how “a $5,000 drone can destroy a $5 million tank.”
Earlier this year, Forbes reported that Schmidt is the founder of White Stork, a military startup that is building a “kamikaze drone” that is designed to roam the battlefield before being sent to destroy its target.
“White stork” is also a reference to a species of bird commonly found in Ukraine, where Schmidt has taken an important role in helping the country’s defense efforts to repel Russian invasion.
According to Forbes, the company has developed a mass-produced drone that uses artificial intelligence to zero in on a target even in environments where communications are disrupted by GPS jamming.
In July of last year, Schmidt wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal declaring drones to be “the future of warfare.”
According to Schmidt, Ukrainian forces have “succeeded” because of their drone deployment – this despite the fact that Russia has a 3-to-1 advantage in soldiers as well as air superiority.
While Ukraine has suffered heavy losses, it “constantly innovates the enemy”.
Schmidt served as Google’s CEO from 2001 to 2011, a time of rapid growth for the California-based technology company.
He later became executive chairman of Google, and in 2015, of its new parent company, Alphabet, before stepping down as chairman in 2018.
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