In 2012, a very young Palmer Luckey stunned the world with the Oculus Rift virtual reality glasses, which represented a revolution in many areas. Things did not go as many expected, but the mark of this engineer and entrepreneur was remarkable. Luckey eventually left the company and took a significant leap by founding Andurilo, a startup specifically focused on (controversial) defense projects. Now just presented his latest project.
Fury. This is the name of this “high-performance, multi-purpose Group 5 autonomous air vehicle.” He didn’t share many details about the unmanned drone, but Luckey emphasized that the Fury “is capable of withstanding 9G at Mach 0.95” and also “at a small fraction of the cost of fighters with similar performance.”
Piloted by AI. The aircraft is controlled by the Lattice software platform, which Anduril has already used in other military projects. The software uses an artificial intelligence platform that allows “autonomous systems to dynamically work together to complete complex missions under human supervision” both on the ground and in the air.
Profitable acquisition. The announcement is part of a financial operation recently announced by Anduril: the acquisition of Blue Force Technologies, which worked in the defense segment and is actually the developer of Fury. The company has already flight-tested the software on a simulator and also evaluated the Fury’s propulsion system on the ground.
Elon, I’m interested. After Luckey’s announcement, Elon Musk was immediately interested and asked why the Fury was limited to this speed. “What’s stopping you from reaching Mach 1.5?” Elon said. According to their data, “the compressive strength is less than 0.95. Air density decreases exponentially with altitude, while velocity-based drag is simply squared.”
Key, price. Lucky answered shortly after indicating that “What is holding us back the most are the limitations of the pre-existing commercial engine used in this particular aircraft. The right choice for this aircraft is to keep costs low and maintainability high.” Even so, Andurilu’s founder emphasized that “supersonic is on the cards for one of our vehicles that has yet to be announced.”
Much cheaper than the F-35. Musk himself commented that “in hindsight, fighter jets with people inside will seem reckless.” Drones want to take over the future of air battles, and at a low cost. The famous F-35 took years to be combat ready and caused a lot of problems, is very expensive – as is the helmet required to fly it – and depends on human pilots.
Ready for the future. Christian Brose, one of Anduril’s directors, explained that autonomous aircraft have “the attributes you will need to be relevant to what everyone is focused on right now: the growing threat from China and competition in the Indo theater.” Peaceful. Facing these situations with the F-35 will have prohibitive costs, but as he noted, “The Fury doesn’t cost as much as the F-35. Not even close.”
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