Ukraine’s approach to waging war no longer matches level of looming threat, - former Google CEO Schmidt
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who visited Ukraine this summer, stated that the West must urgently scale up arms production for Ukraine, as Russia is moving toward a strategy of total war.
This is stated in his column for The Washington Post, according to Censor.NET.
Details
According to him, he returned from his latest trip to Ukraine more concerned than he had been at any time since the early days of the full-scale invasion.
"Russia is getting much better at waging this conflict, and Washington needs to recognize that it is moving toward a strategy of total war, mobilizing its factories and manpower to bombard Ukraine into submission. Defeating Russia now requires more than the transfer of weapons, he emphasised.
According to Schmidt, the West should mobilize its collective resources on a scale sufficient to surpass the enemy in terms of production volume and outlast it.
He noted that throughout most of the full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s greatest advantage was its ability to adapt and innovate.
"Russia had more soldiers, more money and a far larger industrial base, but creative Ukrainian engineers could develop a new weapon or system, test it on the front line and modify it within weeks. Its decentralized networks of soldiers, engineers and defense tech companies iterated faster than Russia’s lumbering military bureaucracy could keep up, he explained.
The advantage is diminishing
"When Ukraine developed interceptors that could destroy Russia’s swarms of Shahed drones, Russia adapted, deploying faster jet-powered Shaheds that are much harder to intercept. Russia is in the process of deploying a satellite constellation to rival Starlink, which Ukrainian drone units use to strike Russian forces in occupied Ukraine. For years the Kremlin’s strategy consisted of throwing industrial mass at Ukrainian innovation, but it is now combining that mass with its own innovations," Schmidt emphasized
War is not static; rather, it is accompanied by the most dynamic technological competition ever seen.
"A drone can be highly effective when introduced and become useless within months. The enemy can change the radio frequencies he uses, build a jammer or a faster interceptor, or otherwise modify tactics. And then the adaptation cycle starts again," said the former CEO of Google.
Innovation alone won't work
"Innovation alone cannot solve the problem of scaling production to meet the voracious demands of all-out high-intensity warfare. I spoke with commanders who know what they must do to stop the Russians but lack the systems to do it.
One told me that his unit had stopped looking for targets because they did not have enough drones to strike all the ones they had already identified.This is a central feature of the war today. A brilliant drone produced in the hundreds is interesting, but a good drone produced in the hundreds of thousands is what will change the tide of war," Schmidt explained.
In his opinion, Russia is mobilizing for a total war.
"It is considering another vast call-up of troops, which Ukraine expects to happen this fall, and is building the industrial capacity to produce weapons in extraordinary quantities. Ukraine cannot match such enormous capacity on its own. This coming winter will be critical. Russia is already exploiting Ukraine’s lack of ballistic missile defenses to strike power plants and substations with the objective of soon plunging Ukrainian people into darkness, cold and misery, he explained.
Defense industry
Ukraine has engineers and a drive for innovation, but it lacks the industrial scale that only its Western partners can provide, according to Schmidt.
"Ukraine urgently needs interceptors, ammunition and long-range strike weapons, alongside investment to expand its own manufacturing capacity. The West should treat Ukraine’s defense industry as an extension of its own, co-producing weapons, eliminating supply bottlenecks and ensuring Ukrainian commanders never have to ration their targets," the former CEO of Google emphasized.
Ukraine has bought the West some time
"But lauding Ukrainian resilience is not a strategy, and courage alone cannot defend its cities or win its war. Ukraine has bought the West four years with the blood of its soldiers and the ingenuity of its engineers. We cannot let it face another winter alone under Russian bombardment," Schmidt concluded.
