Well, a drone with the same name as some dude you hung out with in college is getting a buzzy upgrade. Yesterday, autonomy giant Shield AI announced that it’s been tapped by the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering (OUSW R&E) to build its Hivemind autonomy software onto LUCAS—the Low-Cost […]
Well, looks like the Pentagon is getting super-serious about c-UAS, what with everything happening in the Middle East. Late yesterday, Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF 401) announced that it’s awarded a $500M IDIQ to Perennial Autonomy—the super-secret startup reportedly launched by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt—to provide “enterprise-wide counter-unmanned aerial system operations.” The company—which […]
This article first appeared during our Inside the Dome event in our sister publication, Payload. The head of the Golden Dome program said yesterday that the CBO’s $1.2T cost estimate for the missile-defense program is way off base. “They’re not estimating what we’re building,” Gen. Michael Guetlein said Thursday at Inside the Dome, hosted by […]
The Pentagon wants more bang for its buck, and is looking to five “disruptive new entrants” to get it. Under a framework agreement announced by the Pentagon yesterday, four companies—Anduril, CoAspire, Leidos, and Zone 5—will deliver over 10,000 cruise missiles over three years under the Low-Cost Containerized Missiles (LCCM) program, while Castelion will deliver a […]
We’ve talked a lot about quadcopters used as flying bombs, but turns out they’re pretty helpful for diffusing them, too. Under a “multi-million dollar” contract, the Air Force’s elite Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) units are getting their hands on Skydio’s fan favorite X10D Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) small-UAS, the company exclusively revealed to Tectonic […]
The energy around directed energy keeps amping up. (Again, forgive us.) Late last week, the Pentagon’s Army-led counter-drone Joint Interagency Task Force 401 (JIATF-401) announced five military bases selected for a directed-energy counter-UAS pilot program, focused on deploying directed-energy tech, including “high-energy lasers” and “high-powered microwave systems,” to defend the airspace from the ever-present drone […]
Well, looks like Saildrone’s $37M BPA from last summer is getting put to good use. Yesterday, the sailboat-drone company announced that it’s won a $15.5M contract with the US Coast Guard (USCG) to deploy 16 Saildrone Voyager vessels in the Great Lakes and off the US Northeast coast. “We’re augmenting the Coast Guard because they’ve […]
Up until recently, satellite imagery was the domain of well-funded intelligence services and militaries. These days, a range of commercial actors are filling OSINT social media feeds and reporting with near-real-time updates from their eyes in the skies over Ukraine, Iran, the South China Sea, and wherever else the US government is keeping tabs on. […]
So, the fun thing about defense tech is that no matter how shiny, or fast, or go-boom it is, it doesn’t mean a whole lot if it doesn’t work hand in hand with everything else on the battlefield. Luckily, at least one service seems to be tackling the whole “make sure this stuff works when […]
Well, if anyone thought the software hype era was over, think again. In case you missed it, on Wednesday, the Pentagon’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) increased its enterprise agreement with AI integration and training giant Scale AI from $100M to $500M, supporting “the Department’s strategic imperative to accelerate the adoption of data, […]
