Ukraine’s main advantage in the war — its ability to adapt quickly and roll out new solutions — is rapidly shrinking, because Russia has learned to combine industrial scale with its own innovations. Eric Schmidt wrote this in his column for The Washington Post. Schmidt is an American businessman and former Google CEO, involved in creating Merops interceptor drones and Hornet mid-strike drones used in Ukraine, and he regularly visits the country.
As an example, he cites interceptor drones: as soon as Ukraine developed means capable of destroying swarms of Shaheds, Russia switched to faster jet-powered versions that are far harder to intercept. In addition, Schmidt says, Russia is deploying its own satellite constellation intended to compete with Starlink, which Ukrainian drone units rely on.
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“This war is by no means static. It is the fastest technological competition we have ever seen. A drone can be extremely effective when it first appears and become useless within a few months,” Schmidt notes.
He calls the second key problem the scale of production. Schmidt says he spoke with commanders who know how to stop the Russians but do not have the means to do so: one of them said his unit had stopped looking for new targets because it does not have enough drones to strike those already identified.
“A brilliant drone produced in the hundreds is interesting, but it is a good drone produced in the hundreds of thousands that will turn the tide of the war,” Schmidt writes.
In his assessment, Russia is mobilising for total war: it is considering another large-scale conscription wave, which Ukraine expects this autumn, and is ramping up weapons production.
“Defeating Russia now means more than supplying weapons. Ukraine needs the West to marshal its collective resources at a scale sufficient to outmatch its enemy in production and endurance,” he added.
Schmidt believes the West should treat Ukraine’s defence industry as an extension of its own — jointly manufacture weapons, remove supply bottlenecks, and invest in expanding Ukrainian capacity.
“For more than four years, Ukraine has withstood blows that would have broken many countries. It refuses to surrender. But praising Ukrainian resilience is not a strategy, and courage alone will not protect its cities or win the war. Ukraine has bought the West four years with the blood of its soldiers and the ingenuity of its engineers. We cannot allow it to face another winter alone under Russian bombardment,” Schmidt stressed.
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