Drone company teaming up with SpaceX and OpenAI to compete on major defense contracts

Anduril, a defense drone technology company, is reportedly teaming up with other Silicon Valley tech companies to compete against defense primes for future Department of Defense contracts. The likes include Elon Musk’s SpaceX, OpenAI, Palantir, and more.

According to the FT, Anduril, alongside about a dozen other tech and aerospace firms, is preparing to announce a consortium to jointly bid on defense contracts. The group would cover nearly every aspect the DoD would need contracts for: from satellite manufacturing to drones.

One of the companies is SpaceX, the Elon Musk-founded commercial launch provider that has recently dove into the world of satellite manufacturing. It currently is the world’s largest satellite operator with its Starlink satellite internet constellation. It is also deploying Starshield satellites, a defense-focused version of Starlink that is already under some contracts with the DoD.

OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is also reportedly agreeing to take part in the consortium. As AI becomes a more important part of the world and more useful for than just asking it questions, the more the DoD will likely want its own secure version for use.

Anduril has already begun working on integrating OpenAI and Palantir into its counter-UAV and autonomous software products, respectively, to increase their performance.

Besides software solutions like counter UAV and fleet management, Anduril has a long list of UAVs available to equip the armed forces.

One of those products is the Bolt, a quadcopter likely able to compete with Skydio’s X10 on mission capabilities. It can be deployed in the field to track targets and provide a bird’s-eye view of your situation. Where it differs from Skydio is its Bolt-M variant, which can autonomously strike a target from nearly any angle, self-destructing just before impact and turning itself into a fragmentation grenade in the process.

Anduril’s offerings also include air-deployable UAVs, air-breathing missiles, and solid rocket motors for when you just need to send something full of explosives their way.

The consortium’s mission is to gain a larger piece of the DoD’s nearly one trillion dollar budget that almost all goes to the major “Primes” like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Raytheon. These primes in recent years have proven to be unable to scale and adapt to the modern world of warfare that we’ve seen going on in Ukraine against Russian forces.

Even outside of being unable to innovate on what the DoD needs in the near future, the primes have seemingly begun to show how such large companies can’t do everything best.

For example, Boeing, since its 737 Max disaster, its other parts of the company have shown cracks as well, most notably its space and defense sector. Starliner, what was once the favorite in NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, has yet to fly an operational mission. Instead, it needs two uncrewed test flights and then is unable to complete its crewed test flight, leaving its two test pilots on the International Space Station for SpaceX to return.

We also don’t need to go into the decades-long delay that is costing NASA billions a year to continue the Space Launch System, which will soon be lapped by private industry, most notably SpaceX’s Starship rocket.

While the Primes will also have their place, taking on the programs that are not commercially scalable, the new future seems to be smaller and venture-backed startups and tech companies that can move faster to the ever-changing environment that is modern warfare.