Palmer Lucky, Trump-thumping Founder of Oculus virtual reality headsetT Entering the world of autonomous military aircraft. On Thursday, Anduril, Lucky’s venture-funded A military technology companyunveiled its new AI-enabled, autonomous, fighter-jet-like aircraft, which the company has dubbed “Fury”.” Enduril says it plans to integrate Fury into its “Lattice” AI surveillance system, who is currently stationed at the US border To act as a “virtual wall”. Anduril’s announcement comes amid renovations by US Department of Defense to do Get cheap, innovative AI systems at scale.
The Fury aircraft was actually designed and manufactured by another company called Blue Force Technologies, which Anduril officially acquired on Thursday for an undisclosed sum. Anduril defines Fury as a Group-5 level (That is the highest level) autonomous aircraft capable of “fighter-like performance”. Anduril says the aircraft, which is capable of reaching speeds of more than 700 miles per hour, can be equipped with a variety of sensors and payloads depending on the mission’s needs. Based on that description, it seems the Fury could be deployed for both surveillance and combat operations. inside press release, Anduril pointed to the US Department of Defense as a potential partner.
“These new capabilities are critical to maintaining deterrence in an era of strategic competition,” the company said. “To project power, deter aggression, and regain affordable mass, the DoD will have to rely heavily on smaller, lower-cost, more autonomous systems.”
“Its (Anduril’s) objective is to support the Department of Defense and allied military services in fielding autonomous and artificially intelligent systems as quickly as possible,” the company added.
DOD spokesman Jeff Jurgensen told Gizmodo that the agency could not comment when asked whether Anduril had been contacted about the Fury plane.
“The department does not comment on specific M&A matters or potential, future contractual actions,” Jurgensen said. “As a result, we have no information or statement to provide.”
Enduril did not immediately respond to Gizmodo’s request for comment.
Enduril is trying to cash in on the AI arms race
Enduril plans to integrate the Fury aircraft into its Lattice system, which acts as an AI-powered control center that oversees its many connected military technology tools. human operator, Accordingly Anduril blog post, can log into Lattice to control teams of robotic assets. The company believes that this collection of autonomous systems can work together through data faster and more accurately than human operators. A version of Lattice is currently integrated into a collection of large monitoring towers spanning the US-Mexico border. Customs and Border Patrol More than 100 of them use towers Surveillance of border crossers.
Although it is unclear whether the US military wants to acquire Enduril’s Fury Particularly in aviation, Pentagon leaders have generally expressed a desire to increase the military’s autonomous capabilities. During a speech this week, First seen According to the Wall Street Journal, DoD Undersecretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks said the Pentagon intends to spend millions of dollars in the coming years to build a fleet of thousands of air, land and sea-based AI systems. The initiative, dubbed Project Replicator, is a means of maintaining a technological edge with the Chinese military.
“We are not at war,” Hicks said during the speech. “We don’t want to go to war, but we have to be able to move this division as quickly as the PRC (People’s Republic of China) is not waiting,” he said.
The DoD is not new to autonomous systems. DARPA is the Pentagon’s ambitious research and development arm Spent decades paving the way for progress In self-driving cars, autonomous helicopters and even autonomous, dog-fighting fighter jets. Still, critics have charged that the agency has been slow to deploy these systems in active combat operations due to cost and ethical concerns over AI accountability. But he can be primed to change that somewhat cautious approach.
In recent times the interview Along with Breaking Defense, Luckey said OpenAI’s ChatGPT has seen a recent cultural explosion of interest in AI fuel interest in Anduril’s AI military tech among government leaders and politicians who were once reluctant to adopt or uninterested in the technology.
“It sounds crazy, but it’s so true,” Lucky said. “There are a lot of people in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill who are having a Jesus moment because of the hype cycle around ChatGPT, and I’m excited to get them excited about the future.”
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