Ex-Google Head Voices Future Forecasts After Visit To Ukraine

• 14.02.2026, 10:19

Is the West not ready for a new era?

Russia's war against Ukraine shows what future wars will be like, and the West is not ready for them. In a column for the Financial Times, Eric Schmidt - former Google CEO, chairman of the Special Project on Competitive Intelligence and an investor in UAV technology - writes about this.

Schmidt, who recently visited Ukraine, describes severe cold weather and how Ukrainian soldiers are spending "up to 40 days without heat" on the front lines, and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been left without electricity as a result of Russian attacks.

As the author notes, the widespread use of drones, which detect and destroy virtually anything that moves on the battlefield, means the advance of Russian occupation forces remains minimal. In 2025, Russia has captured less than 1% of Ukraine's territory. The slow and grueling offensive is mostly conducted by small groups of saboteurs on foot or on motorcycles. For them, the odds of being killed by a drone are about one in three, Schmidt writes.

"Nevertheless, Russian forces continue their offensive, draining Ukraine of manpower, strength and will, even though Ukrainian officials estimate that they are losing between 30,000 and 35,000 Russian soldiers killed or wounded each month. The Russian state's tolerance of such losses undermines Ukraine's reliance on a strategy of attrition. There seems to be no clear tipping point, no threshold at which Russia finally admits defeat," the author argues.

He notes that Russia is also adapting to the new era of warfare - in particular, the Rubicon unit's tactics of using fiber-optic UAVs are being introduced on the battlefield. The occupiers are developing jet-powered Shaheeds and intend to increase the use of these drones to over a thousand per day in 2026. Ukraine is building the necessary systems to combat these technologies, using ISR -drones, an extensive radar network, and AI-based systems to collect and analyze data from the battlefield.

"With this infrastructure in place, Ukraine is ready for the next phase of warfare, with swarms of drones controlled remotely and increasingly automated using AI for targeting. "No man's land" has expanded, with each side withdrawing its most valuable personnel from the front lines, and new generations of drones achieving greater range and increased combat effectiveness through improved batteries, sensors, and aerodynamics. Automating operations to keep personnel safely behind the lines has become an urgent priority for Ukraine, and in 2026, drone pilots are planned to be deployed even further from the front," Schmidt says.

In his opinion, the future of warfare will be defined by unmanned weapons. Because drones are able to communicate in real time, multiple low-cost platforms will be able to act as one. They will carry air-to-air missiles to engage enemy vehicles, as fighter jets do, but "will be cheaper and more accessible." As Schmidt writes, the winner of such battles would then be able to advance using unmanned ground and sea vehicles capable of carrying heavier loads. They would take the first fire and expand the robotic kill zone, and only after them would humans enter the fray.

"When the war in Ukraine finally ends, the result could be a tense peace that will teach Western countries as many lessons as the conflict itself. In the future, a "drone wall" could be created along the border between Russia and Ukraine, where ubiquitous automated drones monitor the border like a smart electric fence. Since these drones are high-value targets for the enemy, they would need to be armed to repel attacks, thus creating a hard border several kilometers high and wide," the author writes.

He also suggests that both sides would deploy thousands of ballistic and cruise missiles, leading to a continued stalemate.

At the end of the column, Schmidt notes that Western leaders gathering at the Munich security conference should recognize that they are not ready for a new era of war. The war in Ukraine demonstrates that existing stocks of drones and munitions are rapidly depleting, and the West's current ability to ramp up production leaves much to be desired.

"Mastery of autonomous systems and the ability to produce such weapons in large quantities will determine the outcome of future wars. The West must learn from what is happening on the front lines in Ukraine, accelerate innovation, and build the industrial base necessary to produce at the scale and pace required in the next conflict," the author concludes.