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A top U.S. defense contractor pulled back the curtain on next-generation AI-powered systems designed to hunt down and destroy swarms of enemy drones as the U.S. rapidly expands its next-generation warfighting capabilities.
“We are inserting technology of all types into our systems,” Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet told FOX Business on 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 headed before they can be intercepted or disabled.
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“This technology alone is fantastic in being able to essentially hit a bullet with a bullet in space and destroy an incoming ballistic missile that’s threatening our people, threatening our bases, threatening our allies,” he said.
“But along with that, we’ve got to match — with 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 close to small enemy drones and “zapping” them with high-powered microwave pulses before moving on to the next target.
“This drone that we’re building with the help of AI will enable us to attack 50 different drones with one mission without firing any weaponry,” he shared.
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Taiclet also spoke about the company’s investment in an internal 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 is repurposing existing battlefield weaponry to create cheaper, more scalable defenses against drone attacks.
More specifically, the company has modified Hellfire missiles — traditionally used as air-to-ground weapons on Apache helicopters — into lower-cost ground-to-air interceptors capable of taking down enemy drones.
“We’re actually showing that we can do that as well,” he said.
“We basically have a four-pack of these Hellfire missiles. We’ve reconfigured them with new technology. We connect it with the Sanctum AI, and we can now use that type of missile to destroy these incoming cheap drones.” he added.
“That’s some ways we’re using technology and Nvidia has been a great partner for us in this.”
