Mystery Customer For Palmer Luckey's Aircraft-Killing Drone Is US Special Forces (404media.co) 32
Slash_Account_Dot writes: U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) has paid over ten million dollars for a new autonomous aircraft made by Anduril, the defense startup run by Palmer Luckey, which is capable of carrying explosive warheads and taking down other aircraft, or re-landing itself if it doesn't engage in an attack, 404 Media has found.
On Friday, Anduril announced the existence of the person-size drone called "Roadrunner." In his own Twitter thread, Luckey said Roadrunner has been "operationally validated with an existing U.S. government customer," but did not name the agency. Multiple publications which appeared to have the news under embargo, including Bloomberg and Defense One, added that the company is not allowed to say which customer bought the technology. It took 404 Media around 25 seconds to find the customer is likely USSOCOM.
On Friday, Anduril announced the existence of the person-size drone called "Roadrunner." In his own Twitter thread, Luckey said Roadrunner has been "operationally validated with an existing U.S. government customer," but did not name the agency. Multiple publications which appeared to have the news under embargo, including Bloomberg and Defense One, added that the company is not allowed to say which customer bought the technology. It took 404 Media around 25 seconds to find the customer is likely USSOCOM.
Better ways to kill (Score:3)
I'm glad to see we can focus our energy on something other than profit. Sometimes? We can focus our energy on finding better ways to kill... those that stand in the way of profit.
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Ya, the U.S. has focused its entire government and economy on this here drone. I'm glad you are getting the memos.
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Seems plausible. For defense of a forwards position.
OTOH, it's for attacking planes, not missiles. Perhaps they've got other scenarios in mind. ISTM that for defense ground-to-air missiles would be better.
So...defending what against what? Drones don't readily come to mind for that job. They tend to be relatively slow.
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This is a variation of a ground-to-air weapon. If you see two enemy aircraft on course toward a position you can launch six of these to intercept the aircraft.
The first weapon misses, the second disables the first aircraft, the third disables the second aircraft, the other three weapons return to their starting positions where they can be refurbished to reuse in the future. Since they are powered by jet engines rather than solid-propellant rockets, they should be able to be refueled, repackaged, and reuse
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But kill for profit still right? right?
I guess the objective is (Score:3)
I presume conceptually have airborne drones waiting for potential targets, a cloud of drones. If they don't engage, they'll land with their explosive package intact.
Less costly than missiles or it could be an outer-band defense system with other systems backing it up.
Its an economic war (Score:2)
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Iran has a wide variety of drones, from the smaller "suicide drones" to larger K22's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Anduril puts Roadrunner-M into the context of countering other drones. “Malicious actors are increasingly using state-owned and commercially-available drone technology to threaten the personnel, infrastructure and assets of the United States and our allies around the world. Anduril already provides a counter UAS family of systems to protect against such threats, and Roadrunner-M is our newest addition to that family. Roadrunner-M was designed to address threats that extend across legacy air defense echelons, combating adversary attempts to design around gaps in current air defense architectures,” the press release reads.
What drones are they planning to defend against? Most of the drones fielded now cost a lot less than six figures. The Lancet drone is 35k dollars.
It does seem odd. The drones in the Ukraine conflict are small drones flown by skilled pilots, one of the big bottlenecks is the pilots.
The obvious niche for AI isn't putting an AI in change of a single very expensive drone, it's putting the AI in charge of dozens of cheap drones.
Who? (Score:2)
I had to look up who Palmer Luckey was since a) I didn't recognize the name and figured he wasn't anyone important, and b) nothing was mentioned in the blurb who he was or why we should care.
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I also had to check, and his claim to fame is the Oculus VR.
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Yeah his Wikipedia article reads like it was written by his PR firm.
Re: Who? (Score:1)
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Only in a world where you institute term limits, have stronger ethics rules for politicians, modify how campaign finance works, change out the government employees that do acquisition, and also change the FAR.
Business as usual will prevail otherwise. Unless he's feeling Luckey.
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You have to ask yourself one question: Do you feel Luckey?
Re:Who? (Score:4, Informative)
Palmer Luckey ---$--- Matt Gaetz (Score:2)
"operationally validated" (Score:2)
So take down Prigozhin's plane and make everybody suspicious that Putin did it?
Decent strategy if you don't go blabbing about it afterwards.
Bad strategy to be a successful VR nerd and then get into the killing-warlords business.
We'll see how that goes, I guess.
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More likely against Russian aircraft thinking they are safe launching missiles from 5-10 km back from the front lines (or whatever the typical distance is).
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So take down Prigozhin's plane and make everybody suspicious that Putin did it?
Decent strategy if you don't go blabbing about it afterwards.
And if you don't care about the fact that you're helping out Putin by eliminating a problem for him.
Or the fact that after years of holding back long range weapons from Ukraine because of the irrational fear they could use them to hit Russian territory and "escalate" the conflict, you suddenly think the US is literally going to blow up a Russian plane deep in Russian airspace.
Is these a good idea? (Score:1)
Autonomous killing (Score:2)
So the supposed restriction against autonomous killing machines is off the table eh?
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You always knew that was only intended for other people.
The name is wrong (Score:2)
Slow, incapable, expensive boondoggle (Score:2)
Where's the landing? (Score:2)
The video doesn't show it landing successfully, and I'm skeptical that it can without landing gear and a runway. If that's the case this is just single-use, and a lot less interesting.
Also no info about range and detection capabilities, both of which are what make solid-fuel missiles so expensive. I guess its possible that this could be useful against low-speed drones like the Iranian Shahed, which presumably it could outrun and be able to detect nearby with just a video camera.
Watch the Video (Score:2)
The video on the linked page is really great for understanding what this is. They demonstrate using an explosive payload to take out a subsonic jet. If this could carry something like a Sidewinder or Starstreak missile, it could be used for anti-aircraft roles without being single-use. I doubt the sizes work for those particular systems, but I expect they could find or build something that would work.
The other trick they need is to have it able to operate autonomously without GPS to minimize the ability
LotR (Score:2)
I wonder how many other Tolkien references there are in the defense industry. Palantir and Anduril I've seen now.
Long way to go to catch up to Norwegian black metal though.
Lucky Palmer? (Score:2)