Consider This from NPR - Is the U.S. military ready for the wars of the future?

Episode Date: August 28, 2024

Earlier this month, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, and the former head of Google, Eric Schmidt, wrote a piece for Foreign Affairs arguing that the future of warfare is here. They say that the U.S. is not ready for it.The two authors argue recent technological developments have changed warfare more in the past several years than the decades spanning from the introduction of the airplane, radio, and mechanization to the battlefield. And while this new tech has only been shown in small snippets in current conflicts, it is only the beginning.So, can the U.S. catch up? And what will this warfare look like?For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

When you conjure an iconic image of Americans fighting in war, this may come to mind. Tom Hanks as Captain Miller shouting orders on Omaha Beach and saving Private Ryan. Move your men off the beach! Go! Go! Go! Get out of my ass! What's the rallying point?

Anywhere but here! Or Robert Duvall's Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore on another beach, this time in Vietnam, in Apocalypse Now. You smell that? You smell that? What? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the world smells like that. I love the smell of grape hum in the morning.

The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smells like victory. Or Anthony Mackey's Sergeant J.T. Sanborn and Jeremy Renner's Staff Sergeant Will James fighting snipers in an Iraqi desert in the Hurt Locker. Left window, left window. Got him? Got him. He's down. A few war movie classics.

And you will notice they all show men fighting men on D-Day, in Vietnam, and in Iraq. Now, they are fictionalized, but they do pretty much reflect the way war has been fought for the last century or so. Now, that way of fighting, it's changing. We're getting word of a Ukrainian drone strike in a major city in western Russia. In total, 45 Ukrainian drones were reportedly downed across Russian territory. Ukraine is targeting the source of Russia's air power with what a security source is calling the biggest attack on Russian airfields since the war began. Historically, war has been one man trying to shoot another man. Looking at it as a technologist, why would you ever want your weapon to be tied to a person? Put the person on the ground drinking

coffee and have the weapon be in a drone and have it be automated. Consider this, technology is changing the way war is waged. Is America ready to enter the fight? From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Consider This from NPR. Is the U.S. military ready for the wars of the future? Our next guests have a blunt answer to that question. No, they have ideas for what American forces need to do to get ready for the ways that technology is transforming warfare. And these are folks who know a thing or two about tech and warfare. As the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, and as the former head of Google,

Eric Schmidt is former CEO of Google. Welcome to you both. Thanks, Mary Louise. Appreciate the honor. Thank you, Mary Louise. So y'all have written a piece on this for Foreign Affairs. You open with Ukraine and with a war that features thousands of drones in the sky, AI helping soldiers with targeting, robots clearing mines. Is that the kind of war of the future that you're contemplating as you think about this, the kind of war that y'all are arguing the U.S. isn't ready for? General Milley, you first. Well, Mary Louise, I would say a little bit of context here. We are undergoing an historic change in the character of warfare.

The last major one, the really significant fundamental change, was the 1930s with the introduction of the airplane, the radio, and mechanization. So today what we're just experiencing is the introduction of drones, robots that fly, but also drones on the ground and drones at sea. And also driven by artificial intelligence and the extraordinary capability that that's going to bring. Now, it's not here in full yet, but what we're seeing are snippets, some movie trailers, if you will, of future warfare. And you're seeing that play out in Gaza. You're seeing it play out in Ukraine, you're seeing it play out elsewhere around the world. Eric Schmidt, apply all this to Ukraine, or if you want to apply it to what's happening in the Middle East. I mean, our coverage, I think like a lot of news organizations has focused on the

fighting, on the security aspects, on the humanitarian crises underway. From a tech perspective, as you track these wars, what leaps out to you? The biggest news is that autonomy and abundance are going to transform wars very, very quickly. The only reason it hasn't happened is, thank goodness, the U.S. is not at war. Others are. But if you study Ukraine, you see a glimpse of the future. Much of the Kursk invasion that recently happened was due to their ability to use short and mid-range drones to support combined operations on the ground. And I think there's every reason to believe that you're watching a new model. Historically, war has been one man trying to shoot another man.

Looking at it as a technologist, why would you ever want your weapon to be tied to a person? Put the person on the ground drinking coffee and have the weapon be in a drone and have it be automated. You're going to be much more surgically precise in terms of your targeting, much less collateral damage, and using modern techniques, we can make the cost much lower. I'm worried, of course, that this will ultimately set a new standard and actually lower the cost of war. But if you think about it, this technology is going to get invented one way or the other, and I'd like it to get invented under U.S. terms. So to go to the core of the argument that y'all are advancing,

why is the U.S. unprepared to make the case? It sounds like a starting point might be that the U.S. is not actively involved, at least boots on the ground in that sense, in either of the major wars unfolding right now, Ukraine, Gaza, that we're talking about. Well, General Milley worked very hard to fix this, but not even the President of the United States can fix the procurement process of the Pentagon. So the procurement process is designed for weapons systems that take 15 years. In the Ukraine situation, innovation is occurring on a three to six week timeline. And we need to find a way to get that is with other authorities and other approaches and with an understanding that you don't design the product at the beginning and then develop it over five years.

You do it incrementally, which is how tech works. You get the minimum viable product, you know, and that's outside of the mindset of the U.S. procurement in my view. General Milley? I agree, Mary Louise, with Eric. First, there needs to be a comprehension or an understanding. We are in the midst of really fundamental change here. And then from that, you have to have an operational concept. And then from that, you've got to identify the attributes of a future force. And then from that, change the procurement system in order to build the technological capabilities, modify the training,

develop the leaders, etc. But how do you do it to the point that Eric Schmidt just raised that the Pentagon is on a 15-year procurement schedule? If that remains true, and he also nodded to your efforts to fix it, if that remains true, are we always going to be hopelessly out of sync as tech is advancing so quickly? Our procurement systems going to be hopelessly out of sync as tech is advancing so quickly? Our procurement systems need to be completely overhauled and updated. And Eric is an expert on all of that. If you take a look at the way tech works, you just squeeze the minimum innovative product out and then you just pound on it and make it better and better and better. And you do that every week. That is precisely not how our contractors who build our weapons are operated. And the reason they don't do it,

it's illegal. So our hope, if I can speak for the general as well, is that what's going on in Ukraine and to some degree in Israel will show a way for the people who are skeptics to say there is an alternative. Who is doing this well? Countries, groups, that when you look at the way they are applying tech to warfare, you think, wow, they're way out in front. Well, historically, you would say Israel. However, if you look at Hamas and Israel, and of course the Hamas attack was horrific, it would have been much better if Israel had essentially weaponized drones that could see the muzzle flash or the rocket flash from Hamas and immediately destroy it. It would have been much better if Israel had invented tunnel-clearing drones so you didn't have to send their very courageous soldiers into those tunnels, which are enormously dangerous, as the general can describe. So in every conflict that I see, I see the

military's missing an opportunity to invent. Let's imagine that the Secretary of Defense had, at Google we had this rule that 10% of our budget would go for things which were not our core mission, nor adjacent. They were just interesting. To apply that to the military, why does the military not have 5% or 10% of its total budget at its command under its control to do things that are completely new? General Milley, how would that go down? 5% to 10% of the military budget you have to have here is a high degree of collaboration and synergy between the Hill, the executive branch, and then the Pentagon, and of course, industry. But we are entering into a period where we, the United States, need to put the pedal to the metal and get on with this because this future operating environment is coming at us. We need to overhaul the procurement system to keep pace

so that we maintain our position as the number one power. Let me make it even stronger. Russia, as part of the war that it took to Ukraine, is developing huge drone factories. Those huge factories will ultimately produce weapons that are directly targeted at the United States. What is our response? How do we deal with a thousand cheap drones coming over one of our bases? These are the questions that bother me a lot about American security. Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, and retired Army General Mark Milley, former chair of the Joint Chiefs. Their essay for Foreign Affairs is titled, America Isn't Ready for the Wars of the Future. Thanks very much to you both.

Thanks, Mary Louise. Appreciate it. Thank you. This episode was produced by Erica Ryan and Catherine Fink. It was edited by Katie Riddle and Courtney Dornan. Our executive producer is Sammy Yinnigan. And one more thing before we go, you can now enjoy the Consider This newsletter. We still help you break down a major story of the day, but you'll also get to know our

producers and hosts and some moments of joy from the All Things Considered team. You can sign up at npr.org slash consider this newsletter. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.