Exclusive: Applied Intuition unveils programs to power autonomous drone swarms

Applied Intuition is unveiling new products that, according to one executive, will enable swarms of autonomous military ground vehicles, vessels and drones.
Why it matters: The Pentagon is bullish on smart machinery — but a lack of physical and digital infrastructure hamstrings the grand vision.
The latest: Applied's announcement Tuesday includes its Axion and Acuity product lines.
The former is a "developer cloud" made "specifically for the development of military-grade autonomy," Jason Brown, the company's general manager for defense, told Axios.
The latter, he said, "is the output of that."
Think of one as the brain and the other as the textbook from which it learns.
Together, they hope to account for the "hyper-dynamic realities of warfighting," said Brown, "and of the operating environments that our warfighters find themselves."
Programming autonomous weapons and machines to work on war-torn landscapes and on fast-changing battlefields is a huge challenge for militaries and their contractors. Speedy updates are a necessity.
Zoom in: The newly disclosed software has been used across the services, including aboard the X-62A VISTA, a modified F-16.
Context: Applied in December acquired EpiSci, which was involved with the VISTA and its dogfighting trials.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

The Hill

7 hours ago

• The Hill

A swarm at sea: Supplying troops with on-demand autonomous watercraft

In any drawn-out military confrontation, the U.S. must support its ground forces with food, fuel, ammunition and weapons. In a conflict with China over Taiwan, however, that material will be coming from as far away as the Philippines and Japan. That means relying on the large, mostly unarmed, civilian-crewed ships, such as those operated by the Military Sealift Command, which are highly visible and vulnerable to attack. Military Sealift Command ships could be overwhelmed by the numerically superior and militarized Chinese 'fishing fleet.' A less vulnerable and more scalable method would be to use low-cost, rapidly built, small autonomous surface vessels to deliver supplies. Each could carry one or two standard shipping containers. They could work together in swarms of tens or hundreds, presenting a more dispersed, and therefore, challenging target. Even if a substantial number were to be attacked, damaged or sunk, it is unlikely that the adversary could destroy the entire logistical supply chain to the front line. This would be a radical departure from traditional logistics supply using large manned cargo ships. Spreading cargo between many smaller watercraft almost eliminates the risk that all supplies would be lost to an attack. Water-line hugging vessels present a far smaller signature for detection. Unmanned vessels would reduce the risk of human casualties and mitigate the acute civilian workforce shortages at the Military Sealift Command. Such software-driven ships would allow rapid updates to adapt to changing conditions to evade enemies or inclement weather. Such small watercraft also don't require a port; they could arrive almost anywhere, bringing materiel closer to the fight. They might even deliver supplies just-in-time, loitering near conflict zones as an offshore warehouse. Importantly, a fleet of such small ships could be manufactured quickly in the United States. Adaptive manufacturing techniques like 3D printing could ramp up production in the event of a conflict, while being able to ramp down in its aftermath. This type of autonomous vessel could provide the U.S. with advanced logistics difficult for adversaries to counter. But like any new concept, it faces risks and constraints. Open-ocean operation and the potential of disrupted or blocked communication or hacking means that each vessel has to be capable of independently accomplishing its mission. In the best of cases, autonomous operation allows coordination and collective control, but it will certainly pose technological challenges in development, testing and validation. Offloading cargo without a crew or port is another major hurdle. But if the Pentagon committed to distributed logistics delivery, that would likely lead to technological advancements to solve this knotted last-mile problem. Military planners must also consider the maritime laws and regulations of U.S. allies and partners, including rights of way and environmental impacts inside territorial waters. This could demand significant and urgent diplomatic efforts in a time of conflict, although that might be mitigated if that nation itself is under threat from the adversary. In international waters, the jurisdiction and regulation shifts primarily to the International Maritime Organization, the United Nations agency that developed the maritime shipping 'rules of the road.' These rules will need to be modified if swarms of autonomous vessels are to operate legally in the open seas. These aren't negligible issues. However, similar challenges have been overcome in recent years, including those dealing with the building, testing, verifying and deploying the complex software for the U.S. Navy's Aegis command/control system and the software for the F-35 fighter aircraft. In the end, sustaining warfighting in a chain of Indo-Pacific islands against a potent adversary offers few traditional choices. The challenge requires clear thinking about new methods of supply delivery that are robust, scalable and resilient. Kanna Rajan is a senior scientist at RAND, whose multidisciplinary research spans artificial intelligence, ocean science and robotics. Karlyn Stanley is a senior policy researcher at RAND and a subject matter expert on the legal and policy dimensions of autonomous vehicles.

Yahoo

11 hours ago

• Yahoo

Trump says US doesn't have to meet NATO spending goal

President Donald Trump said Friday that the U.S. shouldn't have to abide by the same defense spending standards as the rest of NATO — potentially antagonizing leaders from the rest of the alliance days before he's to meet with them in The Netherlands. Trump has long demanded that NATO states spend 5 percent of their GDP on defense but has never said if the U.S. should be included in that or not. The U.S. is currently at 3.4 percent. "I don't think we should, but I think they should," he said, responding to a question about his 5 percent defense spending goal. "We've been supporting NATO so long. … So I don't think we should, but I think that the NATO countries should, absolutely," he added. The summit kicks off Tuesday in The Hague with the leaders of 32 member states coming together to plan spending goals and reaffirm NATO force structure and deployment plans. Most NATO states spend just over 2 percent of their GDP on defense currently, with a growing number having outlined plans to get to around 3 percent over the next year or two. Trump's spending demand has hovered over the alliance since his reelection however, and the alliance has come up with a novel solution: Call for 3.5 percent on defense, with the remaining 1.5 percent taken up by domestic infrastructure and cybersecurity spending. Trump's apparent opting out of the higher target is unlikely to sit well with Republicans on Capitol Hill who've pushed for larger Pentagon budgets and have clashed with the administration over defense spending. Both Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the chairs of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees respectively, have been pushing to drive U.S. defense spending to 5 percent of GDP. They and other GOP leaders criticized Trump's budget plans for keeping annual defense funding flat, save a one-time investment from Republicans' megabill of spending and tax cuts. Hitting that goal would mean a roughly $1.4 trillion defense budget for the Pentagon. Only Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have committed to 5 percent number so far, but most of the rest of the alliance is expected to follow suit at The Hague. There are outlines, however. The Spanish government, which is one of the lowest spenders on defense in the alliance, flatly rejected the 5 percent goal this week. In a letter to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte obtained by POLITICO, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said his government 'cannot commit to a specific spending target in terms of GDP at this summit." Other allies who have spent more on defense in recent years are also grappling with how to keep pumping more money into their militaries. 'We have to find a realistic compromise between what is necessary and what is possible, really, to spend,' Germany's defense minister, Boris Pistorius said this month during a NATO meeting in Brussels. Seth Jones, president of the defense and security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in a press call Friday that U.S. defense spending, at 3.4 percent of GDP, is 'lower than during any time during the Cold War,' and the Trump administration's defense budget as a percentage of GDP 'is likely to be lower than the Carter administration's defense budget in the 1970s.' Connor O'Brien contributed to this report.

Politico

a day ago

• Politico

Trump says the US doesn't have to meet NATO spending goal

President Donald Trump said Friday that the U.S. shouldn't have to abide by the same defense spending standards as the rest of NATO — potentially antagonizing leaders from the rest of the alliance days before he's to meet with them in The Netherlands. Trump has long demanded that NATO states spend 5 percent of their GDP on defense but has never said if the U.S. should be included in that or not. The U.S. is currently at 3.4 percent. 'I don't think we should, but I think they should,' he said, responding to a question about his 5 percent defense spending goal. 'We've been supporting NATO so long. … So I don't think we should, but I think that the NATO countries should, absolutely,' he added. The summit kicks off Tuesday in The Hague with the leaders of 32 member states coming together to plan spending goals and reaffirm NATO force structure and deployment plans. Most NATO states spend just over 2 percent of their GDP on defense currently, with a growing number having outlined plans to get to around 3 percent over the next year or two. Trump's spending demand has hovered over the alliance since his reelection however, and the alliance has come up with a novel solution: Call for 3.5 percent on defense, with the remaining 1.5 percent taken up by domestic infrastructure and cybersecurity spending. Trump's apparent opting out of the higher target is unlikely to sit well with Republicans on Capitol Hill who've pushed for larger Pentagon budgets and have clashed with the administration over defense spending. Both Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), the chairs of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees respectively, have been pushing to drive U.S. defense spending to 5 percent of GDP. They and other GOP leaders criticized Trump's budget plans for keeping annual defense funding flat, save a one-time investment from Republicans' megabill of spending and tax cuts. Hitting that goal would mean a roughly $1.4 trillion defense budget for the Pentagon. Only Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have committed to 5 percent number so far, but most of the rest of the alliance is expected to follow suit at The Hague. There are outlines, however. The Spanish government, which is one of the lowest spenders on defense in the alliance, flatly rejected the 5 percent goal this week. In a letter to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte obtained by POLITICO, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said his government 'cannot commit to a specific spending target in terms of GDP at this summit.' Other allies who have spent more on defense in recent years are also grappling with how to keep pumping more money into their militaries. 'We have to find a realistic compromise between what is necessary and what is possible, really, to spend,' Germany's defense minister, Boris Pistorius said this month during a NATO meeting in Brussels. Seth Jones, president of the defense and security program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in a press call Friday that U.S. defense spending, at 3.4 percent of GDP, is 'lower than during any time during the Cold War,' and the Trump administration's defense budget as a percentage of GDP 'is likely to be lower than the Carter administration's defense budget in the 1970s.' Connor O'Brien contributed to this report.