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What is the big vision at Anduril? SpaceX has the goal to make life multiplanetary, which sets them apart from the old crop of rocket companies. This drone loo

by Torkel 3y ago

What is the big vision at Anduril? SpaceX has the goal to make life multiplanetary, which sets them apart from the old crop of rocket companies. This drone looks no different than what comes out of Lockheed?

aaronbrethorst 3y ago
The founder spent a ton of cash on “shitposters” supporting Donald Trump in 2016[1], his sister is married to an infamous Congressman, and the name of the company is cribbed from Tolkien. What more do you need? [1] https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/23/13025422/palmer-luckey-oculus-founder-funding-donald-trump-trolls https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/23/13025422/palmer-luckey-oc...
- Terr_ 3y ago
  ...Just clarification that the above description is not referring to Palantir. :P
  - rbanffy 3y ago
    Which has an even more despicable villain.
- MikusR 3y ago
  The "tons of cash" were for a single billboard.
killjoywashere 3y ago
Read Christian Brose's Kill Chain: https://www.amazon.com/Kill-Chain-Defending-America-High-Tech/dp/031653353X https://www.amazon.com/Kill-Chain-Defending-America-High-Tec...
MilStdJunkie 3y ago
Like Aaron said, also, from what I've seen firsthand, they've been poaching LockBoNorthRay like mad the last five years or so. I mean, it's not that hard; odds are the pay bump was measurable and you were sharing an asbestos cubicle with a toxic growth of fiftysomething chairwarmers who don't know what the wheel on a mouse does. Word is Anduril's trying to do the SpaceX thing to defense. Personal ideology aside, more power to 'em; DoD procurement is a lightless nightmare realm from which nothing good can emerge.
- Torkel 3y ago
  "The SpaceX thing to defence" - SpaceX introduced reusable rockets and e.g. builds their own rocket engines... I feel that I can explain unique things that set SpaceX apart from legacy companies. And that those things are not just "they are a startup and the legacy companies are not". But for Anduril I fail to see what they actually do that is so revolutionary vs what was already out there. And most of the info out there, including here, is about the founder and not the company. But perhaps it's just that the cool demos are not public.
  - MilStdJunkie 3y ago
    All true, agreed. IMO SpaceX also took the fifty-cubic-kilometer mound of paperwork surrounding orbital launch, surveyed it carefully with a steely gaze, then pulled out their unit and pissed all over it. OK, I say that with some levity. From what I've seen, it was far more subtle, and this is the aspect, the "secret sauce", that Anduril might be looking to replicate. What they really did - one of the things, the thing that's in my core interest - was go through the . . tens of thousands . . of specifications, and isolate the ones that actually mattered, versus the ones that were good but onerously labor intensive[1], versus the ones that weren't only not necessary but which were unfalsifiable[2]. One of SpaceX's great advantages is that they could just deep six such very-expensive-hourly-headcount piles of "work", before they got stuck up to their axles in an entirely speculative systems engineering approach or some other brilliant piece of paperwork. [1] Like looking for "commonality" when no such thing exists or is even possible. SpaceX doesn't waste time trying to show how "modular" their crap is according to some spec or other - when a variant goes far enough afield, they don't hesitate to cut the cord and roll a new product. False equivalence is a poison pill across all of aerospace, but in MIL-STD especially. [2] Like the DoD mapping of Mil-STD-881 to MIL-STD-498 to goddamn scrums - how the hell do you tell if that's useful or not? Or if it's an actual thing in the world? You can't. It's horseshit, a six million dollar Powerpoint slide.
    - xyzzyz 3y ago
      What Anduril is trying to do is to first build product that they think the customers will need, on their own dime, and with no exact specs from DoD or anyone else, and then present the (more or less) finished product to the customer, and tell them to take it or leave it. This removes the need for negotiating R&D contracts, preparing detailed spec or working with someone else’s detailed spec etc, and does cut significant amount of process related red tape. The risk here is that the customer will, indeed, leave it instead of buying, which means that R&D costs are not recouped.
chargingmarmot 3y ago
My impression was that Anduril wanted to own the software for multi-(thing) coordination. i.e. consume information from multiple sources (satellites, ground stations, planes, drones) and use it to coordinate the action of other drones/planes/etc. There's a list of things they actually do now on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anduril_Industries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anduril_Industries (see "Lattice" in particular) There was an announcement last week (and yesterday) about a "Replicator" initiative from the DoD (using large numbers of cheap drones) that seems largely aimed at countering China in the Taiwan Strait; I can imagine this is the sort of business they want to be involved with. https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2023/8/29/new-replicator-initiative-more-than-just-swarming-drones-diu-chief-says https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2023/8/29/n... """ With Replicator, we're beginning with all-domain, attritable autonomy, or ADA2, to help us overcome the PRC's advantage in mass: more ships, more missiles, more forces. Before Russia invaded Ukraine again last February, they had that advantage too. Yet we've seen in Ukraine what low-cost, attritable systems can do — not to mention other commercial technologies. They can help a determined defender stop a larger aggressor from achieving its objectives, put fewer people in the line of fire, and be made, fielded, and upgraded at the speed warfighters need, without long maintenance tails. At DoD, we've already been investing in attritable autonomous systems [...] and in multiple domains: self-piloting ships, uncrewed aircraft, and more. Now is the time to scale, with systems that are harder to plan for, harder to hit, and harder to beat than those of potential competitors. """ - (2023-09-06) https://www.defense.gov/News/Speeches/Speech/Article/3517213/deputy-secretary-of-defense-kathleen-hicks-remarks-unpacking-the-replicator-ini/ https://www.defense.gov/News/Speeches/Speech/Article/3517213...

by Torkel 3y ago

aaronbrethorst 3y ago

The founder spent a ton of cash on “shitposters” supporting Donald Trump in 2016[1], his sister is married to an infamous Congressman, and the name of the company is cribbed from Tolkien. What more do you need? [1] https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/23/13025422/palmer-luckey-oculus-founder-funding-donald-trump-trolls https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/23/13025422/palmer-luckey-oc...

Terr_ 3y ago
...Just clarification that the above description is not referring to Palantir. :P
- rbanffy 3y ago
  Which has an even more despicable villain.
MikusR 3y ago
The "tons of cash" were for a single billboard.

killjoywashere 3y ago

Read Christian Brose's Kill Chain: https://www.amazon.com/Kill-Chain-Defending-America-High-Tech/dp/031653353X https://www.amazon.com/Kill-Chain-Defending-America-High-Tec...

MilStdJunkie 3y ago

Like Aaron said, also, from what I've seen firsthand, they've been poaching LockBoNorthRay like mad the last five years or so. I mean, it's not that hard; odds are the pay bump was measurable and you were sharing an asbestos cubicle with a toxic growth of fiftysomething chairwarmers who don't know what the wheel on a mouse does. Word is Anduril's trying to do the SpaceX thing to defense. Personal ideology aside, more power to 'em; DoD procurement is a lightless nightmare realm from which nothing good can emerge.

Torkel 3y ago
"The SpaceX thing to defence" - SpaceX introduced reusable rockets and e.g. builds their own rocket engines... I feel that I can explain unique things that set SpaceX apart from legacy companies. And that those things are not just "they are a startup and the legacy companies are not". But for Anduril I fail to see what they actually do that is so revolutionary vs what was already out there. And most of the info out there, including here, is about the founder and not the company. But perhaps it's just that the cool demos are not public.
- MilStdJunkie 3y ago
  All true, agreed. IMO SpaceX also took the fifty-cubic-kilometer mound of paperwork surrounding orbital launch, surveyed it carefully with a steely gaze, then pulled out their unit and pissed all over it. OK, I say that with some levity. From what I've seen, it was far more subtle, and this is the aspect, the "secret sauce", that Anduril might be looking to replicate. What they really did - one of the things, the thing that's in my core interest - was go through the . . tens of thousands . . of specifications, and isolate the ones that actually mattered, versus the ones that were good but onerously labor intensive[1], versus the ones that weren't only not necessary but which were unfalsifiable[2]. One of SpaceX's great advantages is that they could just deep six such very-expensive-hourly-headcount piles of "work", before they got stuck up to their axles in an entirely speculative systems engineering approach or some other brilliant piece of paperwork. [1] Like looking for "commonality" when no such thing exists or is even possible. SpaceX doesn't waste time trying to show how "modular" their crap is according to some spec or other - when a variant goes far enough afield, they don't hesitate to cut the cord and roll a new product. False equivalence is a poison pill across all of aerospace, but in MIL-STD especially. [2] Like the DoD mapping of Mil-STD-881 to MIL-STD-498 to goddamn scrums - how the hell do you tell if that's useful or not? Or if it's an actual thing in the world? You can't. It's horseshit, a six million dollar Powerpoint slide.
  - xyzzyz 3y ago
    What Anduril is trying to do is to first build product that they think the customers will need, on their own dime, and with no exact specs from DoD or anyone else, and then present the (more or less) finished product to the customer, and tell them to take it or leave it. This removes the need for negotiating R&D contracts, preparing detailed spec or working with someone else’s detailed spec etc, and does cut significant amount of process related red tape. The risk here is that the customer will, indeed, leave it instead of buying, which means that R&D costs are not recouped.

chargingmarmot 3y ago

My impression was that Anduril wanted to own the software for multi-(thing) coordination. i.e. consume information from multiple sources (satellites, ground stations, planes, drones) and use it to coordinate the action of other drones/planes/etc. There's a list of things they actually do now on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anduril_Industries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anduril_Industries (see "Lattice" in particular) There was an announcement last week (and yesterday) about a "Replicator" initiative from the DoD (using large numbers of cheap drones) that seems largely aimed at countering China in the Taiwan Strait; I can imagine this is the sort of business they want to be involved with. https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2023/8/29/new-replicator-initiative-more-than-just-swarming-drones-diu-chief-says https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2023/8/29/n... """ With Replicator, we're beginning with all-domain, attritable autonomy, or ADA2, to help us overcome the PRC's advantage in mass: more ships, more missiles, more forces. Before Russia invaded Ukraine again last February, they had that advantage too. Yet we've seen in Ukraine what low-cost, attritable systems can do — not to mention other commercial technologies. They can help a determined defender stop a larger aggressor from achieving its objectives, put fewer people in the line of fire, and be made, fielded, and upgraded at the speed warfighters need, without long maintenance tails. At DoD, we've already been investing in attritable autonomous systems [...] and in multiple domains: self-piloting ships, uncrewed aircraft, and more. Now is the time to scale, with systems that are harder to plan for, harder to hit, and harder to beat than those of potential competitors. """ - (2023-09-06) https://www.defense.gov/News/Speeches/Speech/Article/3517213/deputy-secretary-of-defense-kathleen-hicks-remarks-unpacking-the-replicator-ini/ https://www.defense.gov/News/Speeches/Speech/Article/3517213...