The-Armys-87-million-deal-with-Anduril-is-about-linking.jpeg

The Army’s $87 million deal with Anduril is about linking sensors and shooters to give operators a better shot at defeating drones

by with No Comment Xpandfy

The US Army’s sweeping new deal with Anduril includes an $87 million effort to link counter-drone systems so troops can better spot, track, and destroy enemy drones — a threat growing on and off the battlefield.

The Army-led Joint Interagency Task Force 401 selected Anduril’s Lattice software for its new command and control system. JIATF-401, established last summer, has been working to write the rules for countering drones in partnership with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security. Sharing approved systems, particularly a common software that everyone can use, has been a priority for the task force.

The task force announced the decision last Friday, saying that a common backbone for its drone defenses was necessary as uncrewed aerial systems become an increasing threat.

Anduril’s Lattice is expected to allow personnel from across the military and federal agents to share and see each other’s data, have a clearer picture of what threats exist, and better coordinate responses to drone attacks, the service said in its press statement.

On Monday, Anduril said the task force’s command and control system with Lattice will involve numerous sensors for detecting drones and interceptors for stopping them.

Legacy weapon systems and new assets will be able to connect to the platform, “enabling distributed detection, tracking, classification, and ultimately engagement of UAS threats,” Park Hughes, Anduril’s managing director for air defense, said.


A small drone sits on a rock. A soldier wearing camouflage crouches next to the rock.

JIATF-401 was stood up last August to rapidly deploy counter-drone systems and common operating procedures across the military and government agencies. 

US Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Donovan E. Melendez



Lattice is also part of the Army’s new Next Generation Command and Control system, which the service has been testing since last year. NGC2 is being built with a Silicon Valley-style “move fast, fail fast, fix fast” approach, which the Army and other services have said is necessary to field new systems quickly.

The task force’s $87 million agreement falls under a much larger contract the Army also announced Friday. That agreement, worth up to $20 billion over the next decade, allows any federal agency to purchase Anduril’s off-the-shelf systems, the company’s chief business officer, Matthew Steckman, told reporters.

“The modern battlefield is increasingly defined by software,” Gabe Chiulli, chief technology officer for the Department of Defense’s Office of the Chief Information Officer, said in a release. “To maintain our advantage, we must be able to acquire and deploy software capabilities with speed and efficiency.”

Steckman said that while the contract isn’t the first of its kind, it was more complex because Anduril makes a wide variety of products, from software to drones and wearable artificial intelligence goggles, that the government can buy. The Army alone has 120 existing contracts with Anduril already, and the new deal is intended to help streamline how the company and the government do business.

“By establishing both the common C2 [command and control] software platform and the common process for the government to procure, deploy, and sustain ever-improving counter-UAS software at scale, the JIATF is very much accelerating the nation’s response to the UAS threat,” Hughes said.

The Army and other military services are shifting their approach, aiming to reduce what leaders see as bureaucratic hurdles in how weapons are tested, funded, and procured. That shift includes buying commercially available systems, such as software, drones, and counter-drone technology, from vendors like Anduril.

Officials have said the changing approach is designed to cut costs, speed up the acquisition process, and rapidly procure the weapons that troops need sooner rather than later.




Source link

NATO-allies-are-linking-their-defenses-together-to-better-hunt.jpeg

NATO allies are linking their defenses together to better hunt and kill drones on its eastern edge

by with No Comment Xpandfy

The US and its NATO allies are boosting their ability to detect, track, and target drone threats along the alliance’s eastern edge, its border with Russia.

Through rapid 90-day testing cycles designed to replicate real situations, US forces, Baltic allies, and defense companies are building a shared data network for faster decision-making. The effort links sensors that detect aerial threats with counter-drone systems that can destroy them, aiming to improve defenses against Russian-style drone attacks, including Shahed-type systems.

US and Estonian forces executed exercise Digital Shield 2.0 earlier this month, the second stage in an ongoing testing series.

The exercise “was really born from an initiative to integrate different sensor types into an easily accessible and shareable integrated sensor architecture, or an air picture,” US Army Capt. Micah Maule, plans officer for the 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, told Business Insider.

While the first Digital Shield proved the concept, the second expanded the scale, adding more sensors to detect larger uncrewed aerial systems such as Shahed-type drones and additional air-defense and counter-UAS radars to sharpen the picture of incoming threats.

Those systems feed into a common command-and-control network using commercially developed software, creating a streamlined flow of surveillance data that operators can view in a single air picture before deciding how to respond.

“So you could actually task effectors to go out and destroy drones from the same common operational picture,” Maule said.

Digital Shield 2.0 included several simulated scenarios that could become real-world threats, including cyberattacks disrupting operations, high-stress conditions with lots of drone targets, and a live-fire situation running the entire process against Shahed replicators.


A man wearing camouflage stands next to a tall radar. A small white drone stands sits on the beach.

The second testing involved various sensors, counter-drone interceptors, and Shahed replicators.

US Army photo by Maj. Alexander Watkins



Adding more sensors layers the defenses, but it also increases the volume of incoming data. Maule said the goal of the shared command-and-control system is to merge those inputs into one clear picture, reducing the cognitive burden on operators.

An advantage of the design is that the system can be operated farther from the front, out of range of many types of drones, and that it feeds data to multiple partners for heightened awareness.

The rapid pace of the Digital Shield testing reflects the Pentagon’s Silicon Valley-style “move fast, fail fast, fix fast” approach for developing new technology. It also pressures industry partners to keep up. Vendors must meet strict integration requirements, and the swift development cycle forces faster fixes and upgrades based on field feedback.

Digital Shield is an example of the work being done as part of the new Eastern Flank Deterrence Line initiative, which is led by the US and NATO. The effort is intended to build a robust defense against Russia that can detect drones across wide areas and counter them with lower-cost solutions.

Artificial intelligence is also being integrated into the initiative to analyze sensor data faster and speed up decisions on how to respond.

One persistent problem remains the cost of stopping cheap drones.

“We have to beat the cost curve,” Maule said. “If the UAS is a couple or tens of thousands of dollars, you can’t be using extremely expensive interceptors.” The US and its allies have learned that lesson from Ukraine and in the Middle East.




Source link