That's why some countries have weird regulations about maps. South Korea does not allow exporting vector maps, so Google Maps rendering is vector based everywhere except in a region surrounding South Korea [1]. China applies a (not so) secret pseudorandom offset to all geographic coordinates in online maps, frequently resulting in mismatches between systems that apply corrections and those that don't. It seems silly during peacetime but when there's an actual war, you can see why people might want that kind of thing.
And militaries all over the globe do use Google Maps extensively, if not by policy then just by soldiers doing their own thing. Wrong borders in Google Maps have nearly led to international incidents when soldiers ended up on the wrong side of a border. And then there are the disputed borders that Google is forced to display differently in different countries. There is no globally accepted map and as a result the map Google shows you changes depending on where you're located.
[1] Actually I am out of date, it looks like the South Korea maps are vector based now. Maybe the law changed. It definitely used to be the case.
The law as I recall it a decade ago was a bit more specific: you could only store and process the data in South Korea. Thus, the whole planet's tiles were rendered in production on Borg, except for SK, whose tiles had to be rendered on a workstation under somebody's desk in the Seoul office. That meant no fancy mapreduces, let alone any rendering on the fly like the Maps API allows (selecting what details to show on the map, their look, etc.). Then, IIRC, the rendered bitmap tiles had to be pushed from the workstation to production. Vector maps, at the time, would have been heresy. Google asked for years to have the laws changed. Korean companies weren't affected, at least until they moved their own rendering to e.g. a cloud provider outside the country.
> Google asked for years to have the laws changed.
The laws Google asked for changes were not limited to the mapping laws but any law to require domestic data centers, which might trigger the domestic tax issue at any moment. Your explanation that Borg couldn't handle domestic clusters doesn't clearly explain that Google eventually established SK data centers and started supporting vector maps anyway---and given that South Korea is not the only country with such requests (e.g. EU), not being able to cope with such laws is just a Google's fault.
> Actually I am out of date, it looks like the South Korea maps are vector based now. Maybe the law changed. It definitely used to be the case.
The South Korean mapping law allows for the domestic service (still subject to slight censorship), but Google didn't want to put any servers other than edge servers to South Korea so as a sort of protest it essentially froze the map for South Korea from November 2016 to December 2021, when Google finally gave up and established a new domestic data center.
Edit: as joatmon-snoo [1] pointed out, there were no new Google data center as opposed to new GCP regions in SK. I mistook my sources due to my dodgy reading. That said, I now have an even stronger suspicion; see my reply to joatmon-snoo for details.
>Wrong borders in Google Maps have nearly led to international incidents when soldiers ended up on the wrong side of a border.
Speaking of, if you go click on the Ukraine label right now on Google Maps, you won't get the red outline showing their border. Click on a neighboring country label for a comparison.
Just for curiosity: did you mean that soldiers do have smartphones with them while on duty? If I were an officer I never accept personal proprietary devices with computing and communication abilities, it's simply absurd and crazy imagining soldiers on duty tracked by private companies just because they have a macro-spay in their pocket...
There have been many cases of soldiers being tracked because of phones they were carrying. There was the widely publicized case of Strava revealing where some soldiers were stationed, and recently in Ukraine people noticed that Google Maps was showing "traffic jams" where Russian convoys were massing.
Militaries should probably prohibit personal smartphones completely. But I imagine such a prohibition would be a pretty big hit to morale and would also be very difficult to enforce, especially for non-combat areas where soldiers might not see the point.
I know someone that works in federal systems in a secure area, and you cannot take anything into the secure facility other than your physical being and the clothes you are wearing. Not even a wind up Timex watch. They have lockers outside the secure area where you deposit all your personal effects before entering the secured area. Everything goes into the locker. So it is a little odd that deployed troops are allowed to carry connected devices, other than military issued.
IIRC they were explicitly banned from Iraq after that website emerged where soldiers were competing with the most gory and cruel pictures of casualties, and which disapeared when the more manageable abu graib story stole the show (anyone remember that website btw?)
> And militaries all over the globe do use Google Maps extensively
ISIS and the other Islamist factions in the Syrian Civil War were also using it extensively when fighting the Syrian Government forces and when planning their suicide attacks, but because Assad was the bad guy no Google action was taken (like restricting GMaps access in the area).
It will be hard to delete all of these points if Google doesn't cooperate. Instead, Ukrainians should massively add thousands of fake and duplicate points. Got a cousin in the countryside who needs their field ploughed? Call in a Russian artillery strike by tagging it as a military camp on Google Maps.
Data poisoning like this won't help if russian forces are being sent to a specific map item.
Best they can do for now is report these geo markers to google as soon as possible for deletion. (And hopefully Google bans the users who are adding these fake locations)
I almost can't believe the Russian army is so... trashy.
For the army of a state willing to be completely independent of the West to use an American web based service for military purposes, and to do it in a way other people can see it is sloppy to the point of tragedy.
Or maybe that's an elaborate attempt to do psychological warfare?
Seeing the videos of destroyed Russian equipment I am a bit surprised how familiar it looks to what it was when I was forcefully drafted into soviet military some 30+ years ago. There are maybe few new types of personnel carrier vehicles which I do not recognize but everything else is decades old, and even back then in 80s it was not any high tech (except for T-80 maybe). As an example, to coordinate artillery fire we used paper maps and mechanical rulers to convert target coordinates into azimuth and elevation angles. Officers would carry secret reference table books with them which were used to apply a ton of corrections: ambient temperature, wind direction, mass of the charge and the projectile and drift due to rotation of the projectile etc. All that was manual, calculated on paper, slow and error prone. I remember myself back then wondering why we couldn't use simple calculators to do this math quickly. The dead reckoning equipment (which was based on mechanical gyroscope) had such high error that after few tries we decided to never turn it on again - after few kilometers of drive it would place us some 500m off the actual position.
Sure, maybe some electronics are upgraded nowadays, it is hard to tell from those videos. But the stories of Russians being lost on their way, it rather looks that nothing much has changed.
To be fair, I believe being able to compute ballistic parameters with pen and paper give you an advantage in a total war where every communication is jammed, network is hacked and energy supply is sparse.
Of course it's trashy. Everything is. Many readers of HN are well aware that most of software is shit. It's not surprising that this extends to military equipment too.
As an example from the other side, the British BOWMAN comms system used to be understood as Better Off With Maps And Nokia.
This is a pattern I've been seeing again and again ... from the outside everything looks neat and nice, but under closer inspection, it's trash and wired together with duct tape and hopes... from software to military to medical to... you name it
I believe the name for this thing is "the devil in the details" - reality has a surprising level of detail, and the more you go into detail, more murky and shitty things appear to be.
In fact I am amazed that complex things, like, say, the internet, work at all !
Some units have also been communicating in the clear on civilian bands. There seems to be a severe shortage of military electronics on the Russian side.
Or, just purely from a UX standpoint, you can use a military receiver with an interface like this https://media.sciencephoto.com/image/c0083836/800wm and then look up the coordinates by hand on a twenty year old paper map. Or you can drop a pin on gmaps and text it to Sergey at the artillery battery. If you don't care about opsec, which is easier?
Do you have such opinion because in less than a week the Russian army with the directive to minimize civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure has not occupied the second largest country in Europe with difficult terrain (a lot of cities, rivers, and forests) and huge army generously supplied for 8 years with modern western weapons? Do you remember how much time it took the US to win the Iraq War? And Iraq is a smaller country, with much denser distribution of population centers, simpler terrain, and smaller technically outdated army. Also the US clearly used air bombardment much more frivolously, which has resulted in a huge number of civilian deaths.
But my guess is that you simply get your information from clearly biased media.
> Do you have such opinion because in less than a week the Russian army with the directive to minimize civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure
You've got to be kidding me. Maybe you've missed the indiscriminate artillery and rocket attacks on population centers such as Kharkiv?
And the Russian army hasn't failed at occupation. It's miserably failing at capturing anything of note, properly conducting sieges ( Kharkiv was resupplied multiple times), basic logistics, basic air operations.
> But my guess is that you simply get your information from clearly biased media.
If you're going to accuse people of using biased sources, it would be good for you to include some examples of clearly unbiased media, so that they can compare and learn.
From their POV. I mean if the "sloppy" approach works (in this specific case) roughly as good as whatever military specific alternate approach they have(1), then it makes sense to use that, to not disclose the capabilities of alternate approaches to their enemy (the US).
(1): That is assuming they have one, if not ... I would be both quite surprised and somehow not really surprised like both at once.
The point is that they should have one. The fact that they are using services like these indicate that they do not, or that it is poorly implemented and not accessible to the right people on the ground invading Ukraine.
After seeing the relatively poor performance of the Russian military this past week I'm not surprised but I would have been surprised two weeks ago.
It seems more like field officers and quartermasters have had every incentive to lie about readiness and equipment. Audits of the same have the same incentive to lie. So on paper a unit has tons of equipment in working order. In reality maintenance hasn't been performed, spares have been sold off under the table, and in general most of the paperwork is faked.
Eh, it’s only trashy because they’re not on our side. If it was our allies doing it, it would be considered scrappy, ingenious, clever, resourceful, etc.
Some positive adjective that denotes using a resource in a way no one expected.
People need to be a little less naive and skip conversations like this. There’s a 40 mile (65km) convoy heading for the capital of Ukraine. A lot of Ukrainians are about to die. Rather than complaining about how Russia is using 21st century technology from the West, perhaps discussing real solutions would be more beneficial?
No, this _is_ people doing something. This is people reaching out in a chaotic way to attempt to interrupt/disrupt an apparently in-use insecure method of designating artillery targets. This method of disruption does seem legitimate, and appears that if successful in reaching someone at Google in a position to make a decision, a real difference could be made.
Meanwhile, you're suggesting "This does nothing" when in fact, it's a legitimate avenue because, to use your specific quote, "all is fair in love and war".
On reflection, I'm completely flummoxed why you would suggest this has no potential. In fact, it seems to be the exact opposite, and quite interesting that these pages are being taken down nearly as quickly as they're posted here. These things taken together suggest that this idea is perceived as dangerous to someone
What do you suggest people do? Get on the phone with their congressperson and have them send in a bomber squadron? As far as immediate impact, reporting this in the hopes that it gets taken down seems about as good as anything feasible at the moment.
In situations like these, I believe the best thing a distant westerner can do to weight against escalation is to keep cold headed, try our best not to fall prey to endoctrination, remind anyone involved to not burn bridges, to never consider others are fundamentally different, etc.
If we were in Kyiv right now it could be different, but maybe not. Actually, the Russian invasion has been very low intensity so far and to be frank, if not for the nonstop calls for more action from warmongers on the internet, I would still believe we are still well within the range of peace negociations.
I'm conscious how naive this sounds, but after all the Putins and the Bushs can only go to war when their people are filled with enough hatred, that's the first ammo that's ever manufactured.
I was calling russian army a paper tiger for a long time, citing immense corruption and deterioration of all public institutions in Russia under Putin. Military isn't public, but that's just more opportunities for corruption and theft.
My opponents usually disagreed, pointing to a big military budget and some modern-ish new weapons shown here and there. No, they do look cool at a show or a parade, but does the personnel know how to use it? Are they built en masse? Is the quality good enough? (With all that corruption!)
Turns out, things are even worse then I imagined, but in the hindsight it shouldn't be surprising: this is far from the first time in history when decaying russian institutions and imperial hubris had led Russia to a disastrous war, which was planned as a 'small victorious' one: Crimean War (1853), Japan war (1905), Winter war with Finland (1940), Afghanistan war (1980), Chechena war (1994).
Now Putin has one of his own. I hope his regime will crumble in the fallout from a resounding defeat.
I would agree that Russia and China bluff their strength but there are entire countries that run their militaries off of purely Russian/Chinese equipment. To trust your national security to something that is subpar seems like a recipe for having a bad time.
My theory is that Russia threw their D league to go fight so that no one could accuse them of them actually trying to take over.
This isn't a videogame or binging the latest show on NetFlix. Not sure why so many are convinced a war should take a couple of hours in time to turn over to the sports highlights of the day. I'm seeing lots of "Putin thought this..." and "Putin thought that..." with absolutely no evidence of what Putin thought. It seems like wishful thinking on the part of people who have given themselves ADHD and get upset when a story doesn't wrap up quickly like on tv.
I have long figured their nuclear forces would prove to be barely function if called upon, but I didn't realize how deep the rot was on the conventional side. Those get used in exercises.
How much time did Americans spent to conquer Iraq? Russians are besieging Kiev in mere days and probably will finish the entire operation in few weeks. This is unprecedented efficiency against a huge ukrainian army fed by the entire West with weapons and instructors, which just had 8 years experience of constant war against donbass.
Shouldn’t it be down already? It’s a US asset, it’s expected to be down in war zones. Was it available all along in Iraq?
Locals know the directions, not having maps is a handicap for everybody but mostly the attacker.
Besides, GMaps could require login for Ukraine, and only be allowed for people with a track record of being in Ukraine. Since Google follows you everywhere.
Maybe you’re joking? Your quote is generally intended for biasing in favor of preserving relationships, but is less relevant when someone is sending missiles and armor columns to blow up your country. You can assume malice here — no problem if you’re wrong.
Russian armies historically do very badly at first, then improve markedly after being banged around a bit. That's normal for armies of conscripts who don't undergo expensive, realistic training.
The USSR lost 20 million people in WWII, about half soldiers. 13% of the population. The US lost only about 400,000, about 0.13% of the population. France and UK, about 1%. The USSR still won.
Both Ukraine and Russia were part of the USSR. Ukraine also lost millions. I am not sure which point you are trying to make. Russia losing millions of people over Ukraine really would be something.
I feel like the US military would have to be completely incompetent to not be able to easily dismantle them at this point considering the size of their budget.
I can't help but think they are planned opposition at this point, whether willing or unwilling.
> I feel like the US military would have to be completely incompetent to not be able to easily dismantle them at this point considering the size of their budget.
Or, you know, unwilling to start a nuclear war.
Which dismantling the 50%+ of Russia's conventional military committed to Ukraine would very possibly lead to.
Russia also has enough nuclear weapons, in unknown places (likely off the US coast), to do a lot of damage to the US. They will almost certainly use them in the face of an existential threat (like being at war with NATO directly), so NATO will do everything possible to avoid that contingency.
We've seen how the US military faired in Afghanistan one of the poorer country on the planet... Attacking Russia would result in a nuclear war that would wipe mankind out earth.
Yeah, after reading a guide on how places are added to google[1], I'm suspicious. Based on the screenshots there, it looks like it doesn't show up immediately. The guide says "You should receive an email regarding whether or not your submission was accepted within two weeks". Given that the delay could be hours to weeks, why would you bother with public POIs? Why not use my maps[2], which is private and shows up instantly?
In my experience that "within two weeks" is sort of optimistic anyway. Back before I sort of gave up on improving Google Maps quality, it was very common for changes to either never get approved or to get approved and then reverted immediately or within hours. No explanation was ever provided and it was very hard to tell whether or not a given change was accepted. Things sometimes seemed to take months to get approved. Often corrections to things that were very obvious errors (e.g. marking an empty lot as a medical clinic) were repeatedly accepted and then reverted, probably by some automation running and overwriting POIs again.
Maybe things have radically changed over the last couple of years but I have a really hard time imagining relying on public Google Maps submissions for any purpose at all.
I know everyone wants to paint the Russians as buffoons so hard right now, but do you really think they would organize and target air strikes with public Google Maps markers?
Given the other indicators of disorganization we've had in the last week? It's pretty plausible, especially given reports of them broadcasting in the clear and using text messages for comms.
> but do you really think they would organize and target air strikes with public Google Maps markers?
Troops probably not, but undercover saboteurs couldn't risk to be caught with encrypted devices, radios etc. A tablet with a browser would raise a lot less warnings.
We were helping Russian mod organize strikes against isis in Syria by geolocating terrorist photos with Google maps: they were at least using that for interface with civilian spotters.
It's fairly standard practice in the military to use Google Earth for air/ground coordination. I would have no doubt that Russia's military uses these same procedures.
If you need evidence that Google Earth is used by militaries then download Google Earth Pro and look in settings. There is a setting for, "Enable MGRS".
>>>It's fairly standard practice in the military to use Google Earth for air/ground coordination.
The US doesn't use Google Earth for fire support coordination, especially with combined arms assets (artillery, air, naval fires). We have dedicated software for that.
Sure, they could use private tags. But it's absolutely not standard practice to use public tags (that also need to be approved, and can be changed, by other google maps users).
Some people might wonder why would Russia use public Google maps to tag places for air strikes. I agree that it is trashy but I have some arguments why it can be real:
1) Many talegram chats has sprang up recently asking the pro-Russian population to physically tag places/do some tasks for money
2) Yandex is not accessible from ukrainian Internet
3) It might be pro Russian volunteers hoping that it will help the Russian army
4) I believe that despite being one of the most powerful army on planet Earth they are quite dumb and inefficient(so does other countries' bureaucratic military, perhaps in a lesser extent). Due to their incompetency they may do strange stuff but it can still harm us and the world
We did this for russia for the Syrian defense from isis by geolocating terrorists based on the pictures they'd release. Still proud of my contributions.
Readit News
And militaries all over the globe do use Google Maps extensively, if not by policy then just by soldiers doing their own thing. Wrong borders in Google Maps have nearly led to international incidents when soldiers ended up on the wrong side of a border. And then there are the disputed borders that Google is forced to display differently in different countries. There is no globally accepted map and as a result the map Google shows you changes depending on where you're located.
[1] Actually I am out of date, it looks like the South Korea maps are vector based now. Maybe the law changed. It definitely used to be the case.
The laws Google asked for changes were not limited to the mapping laws but any law to require domestic data centers, which might trigger the domestic tax issue at any moment. Your explanation that Borg couldn't handle domestic clusters doesn't clearly explain that Google eventually established SK data centers and started supporting vector maps anyway---and given that South Korea is not the only country with such requests (e.g. EU), not being able to cope with such laws is just a Google's fault.
The South Korean mapping law allows for the domestic service (still subject to slight censorship), but Google didn't want to put any servers other than edge servers to South Korea so as a sort of protest it essentially froze the map for South Korea from November 2016 to December 2021, when Google finally gave up and established a new domestic data center.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30521352
Probably referring to this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1873285 ("Nicaragua Raids Costa Rica, Blames Google Maps")
Speaking of, if you go click on the Ukraine label right now on Google Maps, you won't get the red outline showing their border. Click on a neighboring country label for a comparison.
Belarus: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Belarus/@53.696013,25.7358...
Ukraine: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ukraine/@48.2486332,26.694...
Whomever did this...
Dead Comment
Militaries should probably prohibit personal smartphones completely. But I imagine such a prohibition would be a pretty big hit to morale and would also be very difficult to enforce, especially for non-combat areas where soldiers might not see the point.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2004-05-23/rumsfeld-bans-camera-...
ISIS and the other Islamist factions in the Syrian Civil War were also using it extensively when fighting the Syrian Government forces and when planning their suicide attacks, but because Assad was the bad guy no Google action was taken (like restricting GMaps access in the area).
Amap works as expected.
Dead Comment
Best they can do for now is report these geo markers to google as soon as possible for deletion. (And hopefully Google bans the users who are adding these fake locations)
I find it hard to believe they're actually using Google maps like that though. I wonder if it's simply a DOS attack.
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For the army of a state willing to be completely independent of the West to use an American web based service for military purposes, and to do it in a way other people can see it is sloppy to the point of tragedy.
Or maybe that's an elaborate attempt to do psychological warfare?
As an example from the other side, the British BOWMAN comms system used to be understood as Better Off With Maps And Nokia.
https://immortaltoday.com/battlefield-digitisation/
I believe the name for this thing is "the devil in the details" - reality has a surprising level of detail, and the more you go into detail, more murky and shitty things appear to be.
In fact I am amazed that complex things, like, say, the internet, work at all !
Or, just purely from a UX standpoint, you can use a military receiver with an interface like this https://media.sciencephoto.com/image/c0083836/800wm and then look up the coordinates by hand on a twenty year old paper map. Or you can drop a pin on gmaps and text it to Sergey at the artillery battery. If you don't care about opsec, which is easier?
But my guess is that you simply get your information from clearly biased media.
You've got to be kidding me. Maybe you've missed the indiscriminate artillery and rocket attacks on population centers such as Kharkiv?
And the Russian army hasn't failed at occupation. It's miserably failing at capturing anything of note, properly conducting sieges ( Kharkiv was resupplied multiple times), basic logistics, basic air operations.
If you're going to accuse people of using biased sources, it would be good for you to include some examples of clearly unbiased media, so that they can compare and learn.
Russia already lost more soldiers in this war than the US in the entire Iraq War.
From their POV. I mean if the "sloppy" approach works (in this specific case) roughly as good as whatever military specific alternate approach they have(1), then it makes sense to use that, to not disclose the capabilities of alternate approaches to their enemy (the US).
(1): That is assuming they have one, if not ... I would be both quite surprised and somehow not really surprised like both at once.
After seeing the relatively poor performance of the Russian military this past week I'm not surprised but I would have been surprised two weeks ago.
Some positive adjective that denotes using a resource in a way no one expected.
People need to be a little less naive and skip conversations like this. There’s a 40 mile (65km) convoy heading for the capital of Ukraine. A lot of Ukrainians are about to die. Rather than complaining about how Russia is using 21st century technology from the West, perhaps discussing real solutions would be more beneficial?
Meanwhile, you're suggesting "This does nothing" when in fact, it's a legitimate avenue because, to use your specific quote, "all is fair in love and war".
On reflection, I'm completely flummoxed why you would suggest this has no potential. In fact, it seems to be the exact opposite, and quite interesting that these pages are being taken down nearly as quickly as they're posted here. These things taken together suggest that this idea is perceived as dangerous to someone
If we were in Kyiv right now it could be different, but maybe not. Actually, the Russian invasion has been very low intensity so far and to be frank, if not for the nonstop calls for more action from warmongers on the internet, I would still believe we are still well within the range of peace negociations.
I'm conscious how naive this sounds, but after all the Putins and the Bushs can only go to war when their people are filled with enough hatred, that's the first ammo that's ever manufactured.
Deleted Comment
My opponents usually disagreed, pointing to a big military budget and some modern-ish new weapons shown here and there. No, they do look cool at a show or a parade, but does the personnel know how to use it? Are they built en masse? Is the quality good enough? (With all that corruption!)
Turns out, things are even worse then I imagined, but in the hindsight it shouldn't be surprising: this is far from the first time in history when decaying russian institutions and imperial hubris had led Russia to a disastrous war, which was planned as a 'small victorious' one: Crimean War (1853), Japan war (1905), Winter war with Finland (1940), Afghanistan war (1980), Chechena war (1994).
Now Putin has one of his own. I hope his regime will crumble in the fallout from a resounding defeat.
My theory is that Russia threw their D league to go fight so that no one could accuse them of them actually trying to take over.
I just don't understand how that could happen unless they literally run out of fuel on the way, or if some serious airforce intervenes.
Russian army is amazing.
Locals know the directions, not having maps is a handicap for everybody but mostly the attacker.
Besides, GMaps could require login for Ukraine, and only be allowed for people with a track record of being in Ukraine. Since Google follows you everywhere.
Russian armies historically do very badly at first, then improve markedly after being banged around a bit. That's normal for armies of conscripts who don't undergo expensive, realistic training.
The USSR lost 20 million people in WWII, about half soldiers. 13% of the population. The US lost only about 400,000, about 0.13% of the population. France and UK, about 1%. The USSR still won.
Dead Comment
These people actually think they are freedom fighters and want to restore "good" empire.
I feel like the US military would have to be completely incompetent to not be able to easily dismantle them at this point considering the size of their budget.
I can't help but think they are planned opposition at this point, whether willing or unwilling.
Or, you know, unwilling to start a nuclear war.
Which dismantling the 50%+ of Russia's conventional military committed to Ukraine would very possibly lead to.
That will keep the US military far away from their battlefield.
Russia also has enough nuclear weapons, in unknown places (likely off the US coast), to do a lot of damage to the US. They will almost certainly use them in the face of an existential threat (like being at war with NATO directly), so NATO will do everything possible to avoid that contingency.
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Deleted Comment
[1] https://www.wikihow.com/Add-Places-to-Google-Maps
[2] https://www.google.ca/maps/about/mymaps/
Maybe things have radically changed over the last couple of years but I have a really hard time imagining relying on public Google Maps submissions for any purpose at all.
Given the other indicators of disorganization we've had in the last week? It's pretty plausible, especially given reports of them broadcasting in the clear and using text messages for comms.
Troops probably not, but undercover saboteurs couldn't risk to be caught with encrypted devices, radios etc. A tablet with a browser would raise a lot less warnings.
So - yeah.
If you need evidence that Google Earth is used by militaries then download Google Earth Pro and look in settings. There is a setting for, "Enable MGRS".
The US doesn't use Google Earth for fire support coordination, especially with combined arms assets (artillery, air, naval fires). We have dedicated software for that.
https://asc.army.mil/web/portfolio-item/advanced-field-artil...
https://dzone.com/articles/war-fighter-netbeans-platform
https://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/joint-automat...
https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgd7dd/google-maps-live-traf... ("Google Maps Live Traffic Showed the Russian Invasion of Ukraine") (2/24)
https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-temporarily-disabl... ("Google temporarily disables Google Maps live traffic data in Ukraine") (2/27)
Anyway, I agree with the assessment.