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Putin's troops don't last more than 30 minutes on battlefield, says CIA chief (news.sky.com)
submitted 3 months ago by to c/world@lemmy.world
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The average life expectancy for a Russian soldier in Ukraine is between 20-30 minutes, CIA director John Ratcliffe said. Speaking at a defense summit in Pennsylvania, he attributed the deadly conditions for Vladimir Putin's forces to Ukraine's combat drones equipped with AI. "What I would say is, our intelligence is consistent with some of the open-source reporting you may have seen in Ukraine," Ratcliffe said.  "So the average life expectancy of a Russian recruit, right now, arriving on the battlefield in Ukraine, is estimated to be between 20 and 30 minutes." "And that's because AI-powered drones have gotten to be such specialized, low-cost killing machines. And it's why we're now four and a half years into that conflict," Ratcliffe added. Ukraine said this month that Russia has lost about 1.4 million soldiers since the beginning of its full-scale invasion, with over 1,000 of the Kremlin's troops killed or wounded almost every day.  In May, Ukraine's defense ministry said it was killing roughly 200 Russian soldiers for every kilometer of territory that Moscow claimed.

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[–] 27 points 3 months ago* (7 children)

This is great for Ukraine, but not so hot for the future of warfare. We may have to get good at building EMPs for when the urban pacification terminators come.

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  • [–] 18 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    yeah I can't help but read all this as very bad news indeed in the longer term. There's nothing stopping Russia, North Korea, or indeed any random manchild billionaire deploying this tech within the coming months or years and deciding who they think should die. It's not like nukes which are difficult to get material for and difficult to build. Most of the advanced stuff is the software, which can be easily copied.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago

    but not so hot for the future of warfare.

    Maybe the future of warfare is to figure out a better way for people to settle their differences.

    That would, of course, mean we would first have to figure out how to prevent narcissistic megalomaniacs from being in positions of power.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    If drones are operated fiber optically, does an EMP even work?

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  • [–] 19 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    You're confusing communication with what EMP is really good at - frying digital circuits

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago*

    Fibre optic drones are usually carbon fibre shielded - which can't easily be used with traditional radio operated drones because it blocks the communication

    Carbon fibre would seriously attenuate an EMP in the same way as a Faraday cage

    EMPs also usually require detonation of a nuclear device

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  • [–] 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    Emps are good, but they don’t care if you are friend or foe, or civilian infrastructure and it doesn’t stop when it hits its intended target. So itll probably take out the next few Km’s

    So you can probably just shoot it forward on the frontlines. But thats not really how drone warfare works alot of the time

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