A major US defense contractor has lifted the lid on next-generation AI-based systems designed to track and destroy swarms of enemy drones, as the US rapidly expands its next-generation warfighting capabilities.
“We put technologies of all types into our systems,” said Jim Taiclet, CEO of Lockheed Martin. told FOX Business Thursday, detailing the company’s AI-powered counter-drone system, Sanctum.
Taiclet said the system uses artificial intelligence to detect incoming drones, determine whether they pose a threat and predict where they are heading before they can be intercepted or disabled.
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Lockheed Martin Corp. Chairman and CEO Jim Taiclet speaks during a visit by then-President Joe Biden, not pictured, to the company’s facility in Troy, Ala., Tuesday, May 3, 2022. (Andi Rice/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
“This technology alone is fantastic because it is capable of hitting a bullet with a bullet in space and destroying a ballistic missile that threatens our people, threatens our bases, threatens our allies,” he said.
“But at the same time, we have to deal with, through technology, other threats, and we want to match the threat to the cost of our counterthreat.”
The company is also focusing on a device called MORFIUS, a system capable of flying near small enemy drones and “zapping” them with high-powered microwave pulses before moving on to the next target.
“This drone that we are building with the help of AI will allow us to attack 50 different drones in a single mission without firing any weapons,” he explained.
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Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company facility in Fort Worth, Texas, United States. (Editorial iStock/Getty Images Plus/Getty Images)
Taiclet also talked about the company’s investment in an in-house AI center in 2020 and credited a pipeline partnership with chipmaker Nvidia, which supplies the graphics processing units, or GPUs, used to support such national security missions.
He also described how Lockheed reorients itself existing battlefield weapons to create cheaper, more scalable defenses against drone attacks.
Specifically, the company has modified Hellfire missiles – traditionally used as air-to-ground weapons on Apache helicopters – into less expensive surface-to-air interceptors capable of shooting down enemy drones.
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“We’re actually showing that we can do this as well,” he said.
“We basically have a pack of four Hellfire missiles. We’ve reconfigured them with new technology. We connect it to Sanctum’s AIand we can now use this type of missile to destroy these cheap drones that are coming,” he added.
“This is one of the ways we use technology and Nvidia has been a great partner for us in this area.”
