It was only a matter of time before the Gundo Bros linked up.
Yesterday, El Segundo, CA-based integration startup Picogrid and electronic warfare company CX2 announced that they teamed up to make CX2’s RF detection tech play nice with radars and other sensors at the Army XVIII Airborne Corps’ Scarlet Dragon exercise at Fort Bragg last week.
Scarlet Dragon—which started in 2020 as a tabletop exercise—has become the XVIII Airborne’s main triannual innovation event. This iteration was all about integration, data sharing, and targeting, especially with Palantir’s ultra-popular Maven Smart System.
Tissue talk: All that integration talk is speaking Picogrid’s language:
- Picogrid’s flagship software, Legion, fuses information fed from different systems to integrate physical assets, streamline data, and connect to operational tools. Basically, the connective tissue between the many drones, sensors, robotics platforms, and software on the battlefield.
- Picogrid has developed a pretty robust partner ecosystem through Legion, ranging from Northrop Grumman’s counter-drone C2 platform to Skydio. Most importantly, they’ve got Palantir’s ultra-popular Maven Smart System on board, which the Army contracted for a cool $480M last May.
- Maven aggregates and fuzes satellite imagery, drone feeds, radar, sensors, and other data sources into a straightforward user interface that visualizes targeting options, logistics, and much more. Legion acts as a translator for new tech plugging into Maven, which now includes CX2.
In the past few months, CX2 has rolled out two electronic warfare tools, Vadris and Wraith:
- Vadris: A radio frequency (RF) seeker plug-in for FPV drones that can ID where a drone is being flown from to, um, take out the pilot.
- Wraith: A drone equipped with sensors that can pick up everything from GPS jammers to enemy control links to give operators a picture of where EW is coming from on the battlefield.
Better together: At Scarlet Dragon, Picogrid’s Legion system integrated CX2’s RF sensors with radars, passive acoustics, and other sensors. All that handy info was then fed into Maven, which operates as the XVIII Airborne Corps’ centralized C2 platform.
“We were able to execute an autonomous mission where Legion took the threat detections coming from CX2 and acoustics to cue the radar to start emitting to confirm the threat,” Picogrid co-founder Martin Slosarik told Tectonic. “CX2’s sensors detected small-UAS, but also Apache helicopters, which is sort of representative of the spectrum of threats that you’re going to see on the modern battlefield.”
Best of all, the integration was lightning quick. “At Scarlet dragon, we had less than a day [to prepare],” CX2 CEO Nathan Mintz told Tectonic. “We hooked our system in and had it working and pulling signals in a few minutes.”
Mintz added that this collab isn’t a “one-off,” hinting that they have a bunch more partnerships coming in the next few months. Since Legion makes teaming up with Picogrid’s other partners quick and easy, CX2 has a whole bunch of new friends to choose from.
Who said you can’t partner your way to the top?