Anduril sure has a knack for making friends.
Yesterday, defense and transportation-focused startup Shift5 announced that they’re joining Anduril’s Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) prototyping effort to bring its predictive maintenance magic to the Army’s 4th Infantry Division’s vehicles.
Race to integrate: We’ve covered the Army’s NGC2 program a lot, so we’ll keep it short:
- NGC2 aims to consolidate the Army’s cobbled-together C2 system onto a single data-centric platform that integrates different warfighting functions (e.g., transport, intel, logistics, fires, and comms) to accelerate communication, decision-making, and data processing.
- Last July, the Army awarded Anduril a $99.6M, 11-month OTA contract to spearhead the development of an NGC2 prototype for the 4th Infantry Division of the Army. A Lockheed Martin-led team was later tapped to develop one for the Army’s 25th Infantry Division.
- Anduril’s all-star team includes Palantir, Govini, Microsoft, and, as of this month, logistics and sustainment startup Rune, which has its fingers in both NGC2 pies.
Sustainment speed: For a massive program focused on integrating data, having near real-time insights on the Army’s vehicle health and telemetry is pretty important, and that’s where Shift5 shines.
- The company’s hardware and software platform passively taps into onboard data buses and networks inside vehicle systems to flag and transmit maintenance and sensor information.
- For the NGC2 effort, that data is fed through Anduril’s Lattice Mesh to logistics platforms (like Rune’s) to give commanders near instant access and visibility into vehicle readiness and sustainment.
- Shift5’s software was fully integrated into Anduril’s Lattice in two months, and the tech was used by the 4th ID during the latest Ivy Sting exercise in Colorado, where Anduril’s NGC2 prototype is put to the test in near-monthly iterations.
If all that sustainment data talk sounds right up Rune’s alley, you’re on the money. Shift5 was added to the Anduril squad after showing “both Rune and Anduril how we could expose the data pulsing through our nation’s warfighting systems,” Shift5’s new CEO, Toby Magsig, told Tectonic. “Rune was very impressed, because this unlocks exactly what Rune needs to do its job better in near-real time, and it’s exactly what Anduril needs.”
Stryk and sting: At Ivy Sting, Shift5’s predictive maintenance platform was integrated onto the 4th ID’s Stryker armored fighting vehicles. After a successful initial outing, Magsig said the Army asked them to tap into Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles in future iterations.
“We were providing and exposing the data that Anduril wanted to see on Lattice: Location of the vehicles, oil pressure, fuel tank status, ammunition and weapon status,” he added. “All of that data can now be seen by the warfighter on Anduril’s Lattice UI, and it’s shared and distributed at the edge through Anduril’s edge data mesh.”
Given that their friends at Rune are working on both NGC2 prototypes, a trip out to Hawaii for the 25th ID’s Lightning Surge NGC2 exercises could be in the cards, but Shift5 isn’t getting ahead of itself.
“We’re early in this effort with Anduril…but the 4th ID highlighted our potential to 25th ID, so we’ve talked to them as well,” Magsig said. “This kind of capability is really what the Army needs to go fast. It’s a vendor-agnostic system that’s relatively low-cost and provides maximal value to the Army. We’d be honored to join the Army wherever they want us.”
For the Army, which has pushed for companies to work together more often, all this collab and integration talk must be warming Dan Driscoll’s heart.