Watch Palmer Luckey's new AI-powered kamikaze drone obliterate a pickup truck

midian182

midian182

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What just happened? Amid an increasing number of news stories about AI-powered autonomous drones, Palmer Luckey's Anduril Industries has unveiled its latest takes on the technology: the Bolt and Bolt-M. The latter is especially impressive/terrifying, able to deliver a three-pound explosive to a target that causes the drone to self-destruct.

Luckey is still best known as the man who founded Oculus VR and designed the Oculus Rift, but he left the VR company in 2017 to found defense contractor Anduril Industries.

The first drone in the video, the Bolt, is designed for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Anduril's video shows it being operated via an almost Steam Deck-like handheld device as the operator programs its route on the screen.

Its AI smarts allow the drone to follow a target autonomously, even when it is obscured by the likes of trees. The Bolt is also able to discern battlefield objects such as people and vehicles. The 12-pound Autonomous Air Vehicle (AAV) boasts a 20 kilometre (12.4 mile) range and 45-minute operating time.

The other drone Anduril unveiled, the Bolt-M, is an anti-personnel, anti-material, anti-armor kamikaze drone capable of delivering firepower against static or moving ground-based targets. It has the same specs as the Bolt, though it also has a munition payload capacity of up to 3 pounds, pushing its weight up to 15 pounds.

The video states the drone can attack from any angle and initiate an autonomous strike. The sight of it annihilating the truck in slow motion looks like a scene from a movie.

Defensescoop writes that algorithms onboard the Bolt 2 can maintain terminal guidance and enable the weapon to hit its target even if connectivity with the human operator is lost during an attack. The drone is also compatible with a variety of warheads.

Both drones can be disassembled and carried inside a backpack. They take around five minutes to assemble and can be launched from anywhere.

Chris Brose, the company's chief strategy officer, said Anduril will be delivering an undisclosed number of drones to the Marine Corps over the next six months for test-and-evaluation efforts.

Anduril was awarded a $6.5 million contract to provide kamikaze drones to the Department of Defense in April. It also won a nearly $250 million contract with the DoD this month to provide 500 Roadrunner drones, designed to intercept and neutralize larger unmanned aircraft.

In August, the US Army signed a $1 billion deal to secure a fleet of Switchblade drones, which will likely be used to defend Taiwan should China ever invade.

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Watch Palmer Luckey's new AI-powered kamikaze drone obliterate a pickup truck

 
That was just a Luckey shot!

(10 internet points to you if you got it instead of getting annoyed by the grammar)

On a more serious note I've heard Ukraine drone operators claim their drones have similar capabilities. Knowing how US military budgets tend to be if I was looking to buy these I bet Ukraine's solution would be much better battle tested and priced.

From a hobby perspective I bet an ESP32-S3 (RISC based dual core SOC) would be a very cost effective solution sorting out the target locking. You can get a developer board with camera module for under 20 bucks (with big discounts if you buy thousands).
If you use cheap parts like that things could be build on an absolutely silly scale
 
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Slick video. Wouldn't expect anything less from a TechBro wannabe defense company. Right now in Ukraine they have drones doing this for real at a fraction of the cost that Anduril would charge for this over-hyped toy.
 
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Ohhh So it follows the target until it stops to engage, meh.

I would be surprised if he flanked by the three or analised the road and then, by inference, move to a position Where the car is supossed to be in a few moments from now on.

This would scare and impress me.
 
ioliveirafarias said:
Ohhh So it follows the target until it stops to engage, meh.

I would be surprised if he flanked by the three or analised the road and then, by inference, move to a position Where the car is supossed to be in a few moments from now on.

This would scare and impress me.
Click to expand...

From the article: "[...]capable of delivering firepower against static or moving ground-based targets."
 
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Bobbydpue said:
Exactly, it's definitely not obliterated. It's just damaged everything except the windshield likely still works.
Click to expand...

Did you see the blast wave go by in the slo-mo? Ordinance exploded in close enough proximity to a target can kill just as well as a direct hit. The sunroof/windshield shards became fragmentation weapons.

At greater distance it can be used to just shock/stun the target in a non-lethal deployment.
 
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And how hard would it be to JAM one of these things? You know the military industrial complex KNOWS these things are available and have to be coming up with some sort of jamming device.
 
Seems to me that Ukrainian drones are effective cause their cheap, bare minimal.
This does not look like that. It might be improved, though, if it didn't self-destruct, which would lower the cost of its lifetime. So this isn't likely to be used in the battlefield, where cheap selfmade drones rule.
 
Axeia said:
That was just a Luckey shot!

(10 internet points to you if you got it instead of getting annoyed by the grammar)

On a more serious note I've heard Ukraine drone operators claim their drones have similar capabilities. Knowing how US military budgets tend to be if I was looking to buy these I bet Ukraine's solution would be much better battle tested and priced.

From a hobby perspective I bet an ESP32-S3 (RISC based dual core SOC) would be a very cost effective solution sorting out the target locking. You can get a developer board with camera module for under 20 bucks (with big discounts if you buy thousands).
If you use cheap parts like that things could be build on an absolutely silly scale
Click to expand...
Totally agree, they have the biggest advantage though: the fate of their country depends on these drones.

But going back to this device, I did not find its claimed speed. If you watched FPV drone hitting trucks and tanks in Ukraine, they fly very fast. They need to make it harder to strike them down before they hit the target.
This drone seems slow, it is also fairly big, at least bigger than those drones used by Ukraine's army.
Last of all, I highly doubt these would be cheap enough. Yes, they will definitely be cheaper than the ones made by Boeing or Northgrop. But something tells me these will still be put to shame compared to Ukrainian drones.
 
Uncle Al said:
Blowing in a sunroof is far from destroying a vehicle. Sounds like hype from the Mfg.
Click to expand...
I'm not a weapons specialist. But, I believe it's designed to detonate this way & looks like a perfect strike. It's a small amount/weight of high explosives, not enough to literally destroy the vehicle (obviously). So it detonates above the target kinda like a claymore charge. It's the concussion wave that does the damage! If there was a human in that truck. Their brain & internal organs would be jelly after that explosive concussion wave.
MythBusters on Discovery Channel explain it better.
This is truly a terrifying piece of tech. Cause anyone can modify a drone to do some life threatening actions. I pray there is never a necessity for car makers to offer an optional active-radar anti drone defence package.
Yeah, I know. Think Happy Thoughts people.
 
toooooot said:
Totally agree, they have the biggest advantage though: the fate of their country depends on these drones.

But going back to this device, I did not find its claimed speed. If you watched FPV drone hitting trucks and tanks in Ukraine, they fly very fast. They need to make it harder to strike them down before they hit the target.
This drone seems slow, it is also fairly big, at least bigger than those drones used by Ukraine's army.
Last of all, I highly doubt these would be cheap enough. Yes, they will definitely be cheaper than the ones made by Boeing or Northgrop. But something tells me these will still be put to shame compared to Ukrainian drones.
Click to expand...
Ukraine has been using US Switchblade attack drones. They are used as a guided missile or hand grenade. Where it's a designed to explode on impact, destroying in a radius. The drone in this article is designed to be a flying Claymore charge. So that the explosion creates a focused direction of the concussion wave. A Claymore has an arch shape to it. Always face the curve towards the enemy.
This drone is a new design, it never physically hits the target.
Maybe there have been drone failures. Where the drone flies into target but never explodes because the impact knocked something loose, preventing it to detonate.
Let's be honest. Small drones are rather delicate. Not the bulletproof military standards civilians would expect.
So, with this design. Everything works right up to receiving it's detonation signal. Without having to play quarterback by getting bashed around before the touchdown.
Does that make sense?
 
Art C said:
I'm sure the US government will buy plenty of these to give to both sides of every war we're funding.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't be surprised with the current administration. Joe-traitor has sold off our entire strategic oil reserves & forcing oil companies to do the same (selling off their oil reserves to avoid bankruptcy. Because Joe traitor won't renew their drilling permits).
Need to vote for TRUMP so we don't become the war mongering country you precieve it to be.
 
Day Wreaker said:
Maybe there have been drone failures. Where the drone flies into target but never explodes because the impact knocked something loose, preventing it to detonate.
Let's be honest. Small drones are rather delicate. Not the bulletproof military standards civilians would expect.
So, with this design. Everything works right up to receiving it's detonation signal. Without having to play quarterback by getting bashed around before the touchdown.
Does that make sense?
Click to expand...
I would assume that all drones for this purpose would use some kind of proximity sensor for the actual detonation to prevent things from getting knocked loose last moment preventing the big moment. Those sensors are extremely cheap (like all 3 of them for a single dollar or less cheap) and very lightweight so you can stick 3 on there and only detonate once 2 or 3 out of 3 give the signal for redundancy.

These solutions do always need to work 'on device' as the target will likely have a jammer, that's why the footage from Ukraine tends to black out before the detonation/reaching the target. The signal gets scrambled so the operator can't make further modifications - up to the 'on device' processing at that point to make decisions.

I think this is an area where it's very easy to overengineer the solution adding costs whilst realistically what you want is an easy scalable product that is as low cost as possible to produce. Ukraine is pushed to evolve them this way (infinite demand and scarce resources) whilst this looks like the typical western army approach of making something super fancy that can only be produced in tiny numbers (showpiece made using a [relatively] huge budget).
 
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