The expansion of the Anduril empire continues. Earlier this week, mere days after unveiling their futuristic EagleEye headset at AUSA, the defense tech giant announced that they’ve acquired a US-based infrared company called American Infrared Solutions (AIRS).
According to a release by Anduril on Monday, the acquisition “will further integrate AIRS’s advanced hardware into Anduril’s portfolio of sensing systems, expanding the range and capability of technologies available to customers.” The two companies did not reveal details of the transaction.
Anduril also said this means they will “become a merchant supplier of cooled infrared cameras and components, serving the broader defense, space, and commercial industrial base.” SRMs, infrared cameras, what’s next?
See in the dark: AIRS was founded back in 2012 in New Hampshire, where it still operates to this day. The team of about 20 builds cooled infrared (IR) imaging systems, modules and full cameras, which are useful for fun things like long-range surveillance, ISR, and hyperspectral imaging.
To dive into the weeds for a sec: In case you haven’t seen an early 2000s spy thriller, infrared imaging is pretty handy for defense and security.
- Infrared sensors detect thermal radiation (heat) let off by objects rather than relying only on visible light, which enables imaging in low-light and when things like smoke and fog obscure vision.
- That means you can “see” anything that gives off heat—from a soldier to a piece of equipment—even if conditions are less than ideal.
- AIRS’ cameras are literally, physically “cooled,” which decreases sensor thermal noise and enables higher sensitivity, higher resolution, better contrast, and longer detection ranges.
- Cooled IR sensors also don’t emit heat, which means they can be used day and night for passive detection, even in contested environments.
- These kinds of sensors and cameras can be plugged into everything from a drone to a boat to a fixed-site installation.
AIRS has been a supplier to Anduril for years, and its sensors and cameras have helped build out Anduril’s imaging stack, including:
- Iris: a family of airborne autonomous imaging and targeting sensors for long-range passive detection and tracking.
- Wisp: a 360° wide-area infrared imaging system for persistent, AI-enabled threat detection.
- Anduril’s Sentry tower also has infrared sensing capabilities, but that’s a whole multi-sensor situation.
Now, Anduril will take all of AIRS’ products under its wing, which includes:
- The Nyx family of cooled infrared cameras
- The Nucleus family of HD cooled infrared cameras
- A whole range of components and modules to build out infrared sensing and imaging setups
- The Nyx Connect software, which controls and digests images from all of the cameras
Mercantile: The supplier bit of this is important, too: There is a pretty serious bottleneck in US and allied cooled infrared camera supply. There are only a few companies—AIRS and Teledyne-FLIR among them—that make IR cameras for high-end defense applications.
- Manufacturing—especially of cooled infared—is super complicated and takes ages to stand up. Cryo-cooling is, well, a pain.
- The electronics and other components are also complicated, and putting together IR cameras and sensors requires highly specialized engineers.
- Everyone—and we mean everyone—also wants IR imaging on their tech, from drones to jets to USVs. Demand has absolutely skyrocketed.
Now, as they’ve done with solid rocket motors, Anduril has made itself one of the core suppliers that defense companies will have to turn to if they want infrared capabilities.
Anyone getting a sense that the neo-prime has a new, supplier-focused roll-up strategy in the works?