Back in fall 2023, I was holed up by a Ukrainian brigade in a decrepit dacha deep in the Izium Raion, clicks from an advancing Russian unit. There was a half-working toilet and no internet, courtesy of the electronic jammers killing drone frequencies. One morning, I was awakened by a soldier arguing with someone. When I went outside, he was all alone, yelling at a tree.
Except this was no ordinary man: It was the billionaire and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
The day before I saw Schmidt dancing, Time published his op-ed about the wonders of unmanned aerial vehicles. “Observing life and death on Ukraine’s battlefield, it’s evident to us that modern warfare now transforms at startup speeds...,” Schmidt wrote. “Conventional wisdom might posit the widespread use of drones would sanitize warfare, but the in-the-mud reality we witnessed debunks this.”
He had that part right. Drones are the killing machine of the twenty-first century, combining the remorseless brutality of medieval weaponry and the sadism of video games. Now responsible for 70 to 80 percent of all combat casualties on both sides in the nearly four-year-old war in Ukraine, drones are single-handedly transforming modern conflict as we know it. The war in Ukraine isn’t just about the return of Russian imperialism or the future of Europe and NATO—it has also remade war itself. The Top Gun era is over. Today, battles are being fought not only by fighter jets but by thousands of small, often very cheap drones flying alone or in swarms and synchronized to hit targets—sometimes even without the finely calibrated finger controls of a pilot.
“Adapt or die” is quite literally the motto of startups in a Ukrainian technology sector that is now the envy of the world’s military industrial complex. As secret factories churn out tens of thousands of drones, local brogrammers analyze coveted battlefield data with help from allied militaries. The Ukrainians know they have developed a technology that will define the future of war—if they survive this one.
While most infamous weapons manufacturers still focus on multibillion-dollar fighter jet platforms—think Lockheed Martin and its F-35s—combat in the skies and on the ground is poised for a makeover that Laffey is helping to innovate. “If you want to train a machine-learning model to be good, it needs lots and lots of data,” he said, with a mix of idealism and genuine excitement. He compared the present moment in weapons-making to recent advances in AI. “How did ChatGPT get really good?” he asked. “They scraped the entire internet.” Every drone flight in Ukraine, in other words, offers data that will help to make drone warfare in general more sophisticated.
Other countries are alert to the lessons of Ukraine’s drone war. As the two armies clash hourly with modern weapons, Ukrainian battlefields have come to parallel those from Spain’s Civil War, which previewed Allied and Axis armaments seen in World War II and featured fighters from dozens of nations outside the Iberian Peninsula. Even if the war doesn’t spread outside of Ukraine’s borders to Poland, the Baltic states, or beyond, as some predict it will, armies everywhere are rapidly preparing to fight wars where unmanned drones are central to nearly every battle. Whoever figures out what weapons those militaries will need and how to make them stands to be paid handsomely.
The Kremlin, staking most of Russia’s economy to the military, can, for now, afford to mass-produce and waste its drones, particularly its variants of Iranian Shaheds, at scale. Shaheds, which are essentially slower, smarter, and cheaper missiles, are launched without fear of waste. Frequent swarms of Russian projectiles have turned all of Ukraine into a front line: Hundreds of Shaheds, often acting in concert with ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles, are sent everywhere from Kyiv to Dnipro.
Hegseth delivered these promises 10 days before the chief drone commander of Ukraine, Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, publicly warned NATO commanders that, with just four crews of his drone operators, he could turn an alliance base “into another Pearl Harbor in just 15 minutes.” Brovdi knows what he’s talking about: He knows how to fight the war of the present, not the ancient clash the alliance planned with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Following the incursion of 19 Russian drones into Polish airspace in September, Ukraine agreed to receive a contingent of Polish soldiers eager to train under the auspices of seasoned drone warfare units stationed across the country. Europe is preparing for war with Russia once again, and it knows that if that war comes, it will be fought with drones.
Figures like Prince and Petraeus “are trying to cash in,” said a veteran of the U.S. Special Forces who has knowledge of the Ukrainian military contracting world and experience operating in the country. “Buy or invest in a Ukrainian company or get them to share their tech,” he said, under the cover of anonymity to protect against Russian reprisals. “Funny, when it all started, you couldn’t get a selfie-stick company to invest in Ukraine.”
“I kind of look at some of those folks with disdain. Opportunists. But that is in every war,” he said. “I cannot tell you how many military tech companies contacted me wanting to sell unproven stuff to the Ukrainians…. These companies would say, ‘just pay us $50,000 for a prototype.’ I would laugh and say, ‘You realize that the Ukrainian government has no money?’”
“I just took a train into Ukraine,” Streem said. “I was just reaching out to people on LinkedIn.”
Regardless of what happens in Ukraine, Streem told me, geopolitical forecasts look like a future with more wars. “The industry seems to be frothing at the mouth knowing that [President Donald] Trump will not allow someone else to be the drone king of the universe,” he said plainly. “Even if there is a ceasefire here, the rest of Europe is going on an increased defense budget tear.”
In Kyiv, however, drones are now inescapable.
Later that night, in bed at my hotel, I was awakened by the sound of something exploding. Tracer fire tracked dancing targets high in the sky. A plume of red fire blipped quietly from afar.
“That,” I thought to myself, “was worse than Izium.”
Hence then, the article about the horrifying a i enhanced future of war is here was published today ( ) and is available on The New Republic ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( The Horrifying, A.I.-Enhanced Future of War Is Here )
Also on site :