Anduril’s Ghost UAS small drone
WASHINGTON: The new Air Force collaborative for funding what acquisition czar Will Roper calls “big bets” on startups made its debut on Friday with a virtual pitch day that resulted in more than $550 million in awards to 21 companies.
The virtual version of the Spark Collider = event was put together after the cancellation of the South By Southwest music festival in Austin, Texas, where Roper and Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett had been slated to hear the company pitches and introduce the new contracting mechanism, called the Strategic Financing (STRATFI) program, that involves the Air Force acquisition shop, innovation hub AFWERX (that has an outpost in Austin) and the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)/Small Business Technology Transfer Program.
“These partnerships are how big things happen,” Barrett said during the virtual event kick-off, according to an Air Force statement. “Partnerships are how the GPS system changed the world and that kind of thing can derive from the projects that we’re putting together here. It’s really exciting.”
The overall award total includes “$100+ million in SBIR funds, $100+ million in Air Force funding and $350+ million in private investment,” the service statement said.
Roper has said that he intends for AFVentures to invest about $1 billion a year in some 30 to 40 “game-changing” startups in hopes of helping them vault over the infamous ‘valley of death’ between demonstrating a capability and becoming a DoD program of record.
“I’m here today to tell you that launching AFVentures and making this successful is the most important thing we’re going to do,” he said in a live-streamed speech Friday. ““If we’re not working with the best innovators in the world, then we will lose the technology advantage that we have. Getting this right is not just innovation, it is imperative.”
The companies receiving the new contracts all are under SBIR Phase 2 contracts with various Air Force offices. They are: Aerial Applications, Analytical Space, Anduril Industries, Applied Minds, Elroy Air, Enview, Edgybees, Essentium, Falkonry, ICON Technology, Orbital Insight, Orbital Sidekick, Pison, Privoro, Shift.org, Swarm Technologies, Tectus Corp., Virtualitics, Wickr, and Wafer. One other company has yet to be named.
“We got a plus-up of resources, and it’s a lot of money for us,” said Chris Brose, head of strategy for Anduril, and former staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee for the late Sen. John McCain. The new award was for $6 million, which will top up the company’s current $12 million SBIR contract granted late last year by the Rapid Capabilities Office.
Anduril’s project part of the technology development underway for the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS).
Brose explained that it involves demonstrating machine-to-machine connectivity between a large number of small unmanned aerial systems (UAS), all linked to a larger unmanned aircraft — with the latter serving as a sort of mothership that carries a larger number of smaller ones until they are released over the target area. Anduril already is marketing a small (Group 1, weighing up to 20 pounds) drone called Ghost UAS that folds up into a backpack.
Brose said that idea is for the drones to collaborate in fulfilling missions such as area surveillance, “in a way that is highly autonomous, intelligent, all done at the edge.” The goal is for the drones to self-organize and process incoming data autonomously after being launched, so that only one human operator is needed — to program in the mission parameters — rather than many. The system, he said, is platform agnostic, focused on developing the connective capabilities.
ABMS, as Breaking D readers know, is the Air Force’s developing family of systems to underpin the Pentagon’s top priority Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) effort. JADC2, in turn, will enable DoD to put into action its concept for a new way of war, all-domain operations, that seamless integrates air, land, sea, space and cyber operations around the globe in near real-time.
Anduril, headquartered in Orange County, California, focuses on artificial intelligence (AI) for defense and national security customers. The startup was founded in 2017 by Palmer Luckey, who in his 20s founded virtual reality firm Oculus Rift. Anduril also is involved in DoD’s cornerstone AI program, Project Maven, headed the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC).
A number of the companies involved, such as Edgybees, which developed augmented reality systems, and Orbital Insight, that analyzes geo-spatial satellite imagery, involve use of big data analytics. Others, such as Applied Minds and Wickr are software firms.
The next step for the companies, if successful in their demos, is to enter into negotiations with the Air Force for an actual development program.
The real challenge for small, innovative companies, Brose said, is “the scaling challenge, and the bridge across the valley of death.”
