Adam Bry, co-founder and CEO of Skydio, discusses the current state of drone combat in the Ukraine war at the a16z American Dynamism Summit.
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Bry: Mass AI Drone Swarms Will Outperform Multi-Billion-Dollar Legacy Weapons
“Buying legacy exquisite systems that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, some cases billions of dollars, there's a trade-off between, like, one or two of something, or, you know, 10,000, or a 100,000, or a million drones, and, you know, if you just look into…”
Insight
Bry: Autonomous AI Strikes Cause Less Collateral Damage Than Unguided Bombs
“Oftentimes, you know, your choice if you want to take out a target is dropping a 500 or 2000 pound bomb, which is going to cause widespread destruction and a lot of collateral damage. And so, an AI system that might be using autonomy to, like, a pretty intense…”
Insight
Bry: Modern Military Conflict Is Becoming a Software-Writing Fight
“I think a modern conflict becomes basically like a software writing fight.”
Assertion Supported
Bry: U.S. Drone Procurement Lags Demand by Three Orders of Magnitude
“The U.S. Military, I think to their credit, has programs generally pointed in this direction but those programs are operating at the scale of thousands, like single-digit thousands. So we're literally off by, like, three orders of magnitude, I would argue, rel…”
Disclosure
Bry: Skydio's First Drone Generation Failed in Ukraine Battlefield Conditions
“Candidly, like, our first round of drones in Ukraine basically failed.”
Assertion Supported
Bry: U.S. Army Quadcopter Requirements Originally Omitted Electronic Warfare Capability
“Had built the system largely informed by the US Army's requirements for what they thought was important for a quadcopter in this space. And electronic warfare was just nowhere on that list.”