Hey, welcome back to The National Defense. It's Randy Miller and we're always happy to catch up with the goings-on at Anduril and Eric Brock, the CEO. There's so many things going as fast as lightning and Eric joins us here again on The National Defense. Eric, how you doing?
I'm doing great, Randy, and thank you for having me. As you said, we continue to work hard and it's great to be back and, you know, kind of an update on what we're doing. So, thanks for having me.
I mean, you know, you guys are contributing so many great things to the nation's defense and it just seems like the news these days, AI is not only moving fast, it's moving lightning fast. Is that kind of the perception?
Yeah, no question about that. It's not just the perception, it's our reality. And when you think about artificial intelligence for systems and autonomous systems, a company like Anduril, and remember when I talk about autonomous systems, I'm talking about drones, some of them are, you know, the ones that are tactical, they're quadcopters, others are fixed wings, flying at higher and longer distances. We have ground vehicles and the like. And, you know, our development of those drones are all powered by artificial intelligence for like the engineering around them, but then the operations as well. When you're making things autonomous, the intelligence is required. So, that's in and around what we call physical autonomy where you have sensors kind of sensing the environment and software that allows these systems to operate. So, you know, intelligence is really integral to what we do.
Yeah, and I mean, talk about real time. You know, with everything going on in the world right now, there was just a drone rescue the other day. And so, it's not only happening, but it's happening in a big way and is proving to be extremely effective.
It is. And that was an event that was really a milestone for the industry for folks like ourselves. What you had there was, you know, a traditional helicopter was attacked by actually another unmanned system. So, that was a drone that took the Apache down regrettably. But fortunately, the pilots were able to eject. And when they did, they landed in the sea and it was an unmanned surface vessel, right? A boat that was, you know, totally unmanned, went out, picked them up, rescued them, and brought them back safely. And that really demonstrates the power, not just the power and the value of the technologies, but the maturity, right? These systems are now having major impacts all across the battlefield and security operations.
Yeah, that was just fascinating to see. I mean, you know, you see something like that and, you know, you and I have talked before about all of the innovation that's going on right now in defense. And to see something like that, that had to kind of set you on fire a little bit, huh?
It totally did. Yeah, I mean, again, we work so hard at this. We see what we're doing. It's really important for companies like Anduril to have our peers also advancing technology because, you know, at the end of the day when we're doing what we're doing is often enabling what somebody else is doing and vice versa. So, as more and more unmanned systems are deployed, more and more autonomous systems are deployed, you know, getting them to work together becomes critically important. So again, the whole, there's sort of this rising tide and all of that is to the better, the benefit of the public because, you know, it gives us tools to keep America safe and secure.
Yeah, we're talking to Eric Brock, CEO of Anduril here on The National Defense. And not only that, and I know that we've kind of talked about this before, and you consider this every day as well. But, you know, our men and women in the military, they're on the ground and deployed especially, we've definitely heard from them when that happened. And, you know, you talk about a morale boost, a confidence boost to know that some of these systems, because some of these systems, you know, they're in development, some of them are ready to be deployed, but sometimes there's not a situation where they're ever tested in battle. So, that was so nice to see, and something else that makes the military so proud and happy they work, right?
Randy, that's a terrific point you're making because, you know, when we're, you know, just the general public observing what's going on in defense and homeland security, if you're doing that, you can't miss what's going on in Ukraine with Russia, what's going on in Israel versus Iran and the Gulf. And what's quite clear is that these unmanned systems, the autonomous systems are dramatically changing the battlefield. And I think it's not always obvious to the general public that, you know, where we're making our advancements here to continue to be leaders in terms of capabilities, right? Our Department of War is armed with these tools all day long, but you might not be aware of it.
And of course, if you're not aware of it, you have this concern from a security standpoint that maybe we're falling behind. And what I can assure you is that industry working very closely with the Department of Defense, you know, are bringing amazing capabilities. And when we're there and then we start deploying them, systems that, you know, folks just haven't heard of before, but when we see them working so well and so effectively, that can only and should only increase our confidence that we can protect our country.
Yeah, and it also demonstrates, I think, Eric, about the need for those kind of technical skills that the men and women can bring the military in terms of drone operation, behind-the-scenes technology, inside the actual systems. And that's a whole other, it's amazing to me about how this entire cottage industry of defense technology has created a whole breed of new jobs in the military, right?
Yeah, that's huge. You know, as technology evolves and starts to be deployed across, you know, various operations both in the field, when you think about systems that are defending and, you know, taking the offense to the adversary. You're also going back into the operations of the Army, Air Force, Marines, and elsewhere and transforming those as well. So, really, you know, from the back office to the front lines, you're seeing transformations. And that's creating, you know, a tremendous number of opportunities for jobs and skill development, which will only ultimately help, you know, the private sector in a really serious way.
So, what we see, we see that at Anduril, right? We see folks who are being trained and in some instances, of course, we're training them ourselves on our systems, and then they go into the private sector and can be, you know, that much more productive. So, you know, I think this is certainly a critical aspect of what we do, training the men and women who are defending the country. But then they can go, you know, become, you know, producing on our side of the table as well, you know, if that's where their career paths take them. So, it's really fantastic.
That's what I was thinking, you know, they get that training in the military, and they come to work for Anduril, right? I mean, that's a great system there. I want to talk to you about some of your partners here, Palantir, most notably, that you guys have worked with and are working with now. Give us a little idea of what you guys are doing with them and what their capabilities are.
Sure, yeah, we have a very substantial partnership with Palantir that we've been building over the last six-plus months. This came initially through, well, we had long-term relationships and just for your listeners, Palantir is a really important company in terms of providing the backbone of a lot of artificial intelligence-enabled systems around command and control of military assets. You know, across the board really, but particularly you see that as being impactful on the battlefield. So, what Palantir does with companies like Anduril is they'll apply their AI-enabled tools to help us run our businesses more effectively. So, that's a system or a program they call Warp Speed. So, that's really all about making our operations more efficient and scalable because of course companies like Anduril need to grow a lot.
So, that's one aspect of it. You know, what's maybe even more exciting and tangible when you think about what we're doing with customers is they're able to integrate Anduril and our autonomous systems. You know, that's going from all the way to the stratosphere now. We have a high altitude balloon with a company that we acquired called WorldView. We've operationalized the stratosphere, which means we can deploy these balloons, you know, keep them in station and have persistent ISR, so intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance over areas of interest for say the US Navy or the Air Force or Army. And that's a really important tool that then Palantir can start to integrate with us across multiple domains.
And those domains, you know, our stratosphere is just below space. It's not an area of a domain we think a lot about, but it's becoming increasingly important. But then underneath the stratosphere, we have the aerial domain. Of course, we have the ground and we have the surface or the water. What we've been doing with Palantir is, you know, starting in the stratosphere, we're starting to integrate autonomous systems across all those domains I just described. So we're moving the autonomy really from individual autonomy, say the drone can be autonomous, to mission autonomy where these domains start to work together. Leads to faster decisions and leads to more productive outcomes for the Department of Defense.
Eric, did you ever think at this point in your career you'd be back to playing with balloons?
[Laughter] I did not actually. I did not. But it, you know, Randy, it's fascinating, these technologies, you know, what is old is new, I think, as you're saying. And I'll remember, your listeners will probably remember this because it made big news, you know, back several years ago when we had this, you know, just random, I think, from China, right?
