Inside Lockheed’s push to integrate autonomy, AI, and next-gen defense systems

All right, ladies and gentlemen, a very good morning on this beautiful day three of AUSA

Welcome, one and oh, wow, you're all up so early and you're caffeinated with smiles on your face

Love to see it. I'm J.D. Durkin, a contributor here at Defense News. And on this, is it Wednesday

Wednesday, yeah. On this Wednesday morning, we're taking a closer look at Army modernization

It's a transformation unlike anything the service has undertaken in decades, from long-range precision fires to next-generation combat vehicles to network modernization itself

It's an effort that is actively reshaping how the Army will fight, adapt, and win in the decades ahead

Before we kick things off this morning, I'd like to personally thank the team at Lockheed Martin

for making this conversation a possibility and for supporting our efforts here at AUSA

And to kick things off, I'm joined by Dan Tenney. Dan is Vice President for Strategy and Business Development at Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems

Good morning, Dan. Thanks for being here. Oh, thank you very much. Pleasure to be with you this morning. Also bright and early after it with a cup of coffee. Love to see that

Lockheed Martin introduced a number of new technologies, Dan, focused on autonomy at AUSA this year here in D.C

Talk to me a bit more, Dan. What are some of the ways you see autonomy playing a role in the overall goals of Army modernization

Yeah, sure will. So all of you that were here last year with us at AUSA saw the autonomous Blackhawk that we flew from the floor at AUSA

And there we demonstrated what we call our matrix technology, which we've been developing for about five years

So we flew the Blackhawk. It was located in Stratford, Connecticut. So it was located about 330 miles away, and we flew it here from the floor

And over this past year, we've been doing a lot of activities to get that operationally ready

So we've had the soldiers put it through its paces. We flew at Northern Strike

We had a number of autonomous flights with the Marine Corps. And then we actually leveraged that capability to show we could do water drops on wildfires and those kind of aspects

And so we've done a lot of testing, and we've come back this year to AUSA to really roll out something we're calling the Hawk Family of Effects

The first thing we rolled out, any of you that were here with us Monday morning, was the U-Hawk

And the U-Hawk is a completely autonomous Black Hawk. It's actually a Lima model of the Black Hawk

that we took all of the unmanned systems off of, so it does not have a cockpit, if you go look at the U-Hawk

which gives us about 25% more space inside the U-Hawk. And what we demonstrated there was the ability to fly completely autonomous for contested logistics purposes

to bring anything from medical supplies to arms to munitions to the fight to an unmanned ground vehicle

So we showed an unmanned ground vehicle coming out of the front of the U-Hawk at this show

We also showed out the side launch defects And so the U-Hawk really is a beast

Because it leverages the legacy of the Black Hawk And all the elements that that brings to the table

So same distance, same robustness But brings to that an unmanned capability

Such that you could load 30 medium launch defects That come out of the side Or up to 100 smaller launch defects come out of the side You could bring cargo in You could do rescue missions You could bring materials into the fight

And that's one of the key lessons we saw in Ukraine was you have to have a continuous flow of munitions, supplies, materials to make sure the warfighters are steady and equipped to stay in the fight

The other thing we rolled out right above UHAWK, you may have seen, is something we called NOMAD

You may have seen the press releases on that. The Nomad is our version of the next generation of UAS

And so Nomad leverages our concept around a roto-blown wing. It takes off vertically and flies like an airplane

And that gives you a lot of advantages because it means Nomad doesn't need a runway. It means Nomad can launch off the back of a truck

It can go off the side of a ship. It uses hyper-electric technology, which means it can go long endurance, so it can travel 500 nautical miles, can loiter for 16 hours

And that's a small version. That particular version we've been building as part of a DARPA program

It's a 330-pound variety that can carry a 60-pound payload. But the larger versions can carry up to 1,000 pounds

So what we're really showing is the ability to have crewed, uncrewed capabilities that operate simultaneous and are integrated together for the modern war fight

Yeah, what a better event than AUSA to roll out a lot of these really exciting things you and your colleagues are working on

I suppose congratulations are in order. Last month you were awarded the role on the Army's Next Gen Command and Control contract

The Army has said the contract is all about rapid delivery of capability and, I quote

it's not business as usual and reflects exactly what we are trying to achieve

through transformation across the Army and the acquisition community. Dan, talk to me about some of the ways that you are approaching Next Gen Command and Control

maybe a bit differently, in order to effectively meet those goals. Yeah, so, I mean, we fundamentally believe the modern war fight will be about interconnectivity among systems

Systems have to talk, even the Blackhawk we just talked about and the autonomous capability

We moved very rapidly, 10 months. And part of this next-gen command and control concept involves something we call rapid deployment kit

And a rapid deployment kit is part of a federated node that you could put on any platform

So it effectively turns the Blackhawk into a node or any other platform. And so part of what we're going to see in the evolution of command and control is everything's interconnected

So you can have pilots on board an aircraft or commanders on the ground, you know

that are actually effectively drawing on assets in the air or on land or at sea

Interconnectivity is going to be the key. When you look at what the Army's doing, I mean, really a true federated command and control system

we've approached it very differently. So a couple things. One, we think it has to be an open systems architecture

We fundamentally believe that the last thing the government wants is a system that has, you know

tight controls, this proprietary nature that can't have third-party apps coming into it

So our design really is an open systems architecture where any third-party app could plug into that

and you could also bring in the best effector, best sensor, those kind of capabilities into that system

The second thing is we working a lot with small and medium businesses So we had a lot of partners on our team that are bringing new innovations to the table And we proud of that We proud to work with small innovative companies that are bringing new developments new technology to the table And so we coming with a coalition of

partners to help design this for the Army and to make sure it's a federated system that connects

all of systems and platforms across the air, space, and ground domains. Yeah, and to the point about

that new emerging tech, the Army has made counter-unmanned aerial systems tech a big priority

has gone as far as to launch a new task force to accelerate drone defense technology as well

From where you're positioned, where do you think it is going to take to deliver meaningful counter-UAS capabilities

given the nature of these emerging threats? It seems to be the discussion of the day, right, counter-UAS and how we deal with, you know

you certainly have an offensive capabilities that we've been poking at here this morning, but you also have a lot of defensive capabilities

I mean, one of the things we've seen in Ukraine for sure is that unmanned systems are here to stay

and they're part of the fight. And we see a variety of those when we think about UAS capabilities

We see some that are very cheap. They're going to be first to the fight, so you're bringing in just a mass amount of effects

And then we see more robust capabilities coming in. We've developed something we call Sanctum

What we're really bringing to the table is our legacy with the Aegis combat system

If you think about the modern-day ship that's out at sea, it has to protect itself from everything

So it has to have offensive and defensive capabilities, and it has to be an island on its own that's capable of going out unafraid and alone

Using that kind of capability that we understand with the fire control loop, working with a lot of partners, we're bringing in a number of effectors

And so Sanctum is a unique system because we have a lot of partners that are along with us to bring effectors

things like we have a laser recently that shot down, a 3-kilowatt laser that mitigated over 30 different drones

It also has kinetic effectors, has EW and cyber, high-powered microwave constructs that we're working on

And then also it has the ability to learn. And that's the biggest thing I want to tell you about Sanctum

What we've done is integrated AI and ML into our C2 capabilities such that when Sanctum sees something at one location

in a particular behavior of a drone or UAS, it teaches the entire system

When it sees a new tracking mechanism or a new way a drone is performing or materials that we see on the drone, it teaches the entire system

And the system has to learn. And so what Sanctum really brings to the table is if you have a mass effects coming in, you know, swarms of drones are where the challenge really is

I mean, taking down one drone is interesting. Taking down swarms of drones that are all sizes and with different materials and hardened in different ways is really where the trick comes in

And, well, what Sanctum does is it leverages our ability to look at those unique characteristics

and actually says use the laser on these drones. Use EW and cyber on these drones

Use a kinetic effector on this drone. And actually the AI will tell the operator here's the best effector to use

It actually gives it in a percentage basis. You could also use it in automated fashion

You could say hey just let the machine take over let it deal and mitigate these different drones But the key is just all the lessons we learned over the years of mitigated you know a layered defense system right You have to have that You have to have multiple redundancy So if one of your effectors fails you have other

effectors that come in. And then in today's fight, you have to be really smart about what those

things are, because the last thing you want to do is use a $100,000 missile on a $5,000 drone

that you could have taken out with cyber or EW and that kind of thing. So we're really proud of

this, but we're also willing to integrate any effector or sensor into the capability

So all the companies in the room and others, if you have innovations you'd like to see

coming to Sanctum, come talk to us, because it really is an open system for us that we

think has to continue to evolve to help the warfighter overcome the threats they face today

Dan, before I let you go, and you've been very generous with your time here to kick off the event, Integrated Air and Missile Defense continues to be, without a doubt, a top priority

mission, particularly with the significant momentum behind the so-called Golden Dome, excuse me, for America. How does Lockheed Martin view the critical technical challenges behind

the Golden Dome, and how are you approaching those? Yeah, so we're certainly one of the

believers that believes we have many of these capabilities in place today. You know, the United

States for a long time has been a leader in integrated air and missile defense, both at sea

and on land. The trick is we have to connect these together. So we have to have integrated systems that

go from space to the air layer to the ground, tip and cue, for example, from our space-based sensors down to our radar systems

and then use different effectors to mitigate threats that are coming in. A lot of our effort has been on early operational ysis with the government

We actually built in a classified space some areas the government can go in and do wargaming, testing these capabilities

look at our response rates, look at what happens when we bring in new effectors into the fight for Golden Dome

So many ways what we see for counter UAS, that's what Golden Dome is on a large scale

is the ability to mitigate and deal with various incoming threats, whether they're ballistic missiles or other drone aspects that may come in

So we believe that the capabilities have to be integrated from the space layer to the air layer to the ground layer

and even surface and subsurface levels. That's a lot of time, a lot of space we're spending our time currently

We also believe Golden Dome is an olive industry approach. So we're working with partners across the industry to lead the way for the government to enable the most robust system in the world

You know, to move fast, you interconnect what you have today. And then the second tier, we believe, will be in more advanced capabilities both in space and the ground layer

that bring things like directed energy into the fight and other space-based applications

So we're proud to partner with the government. We believe it's an all-of-industry approach, and we're moving very rapidly to integrate these capabilities together

Yeah, we're really grateful for your time to kick off the conversation today. That is Dan Tenney, Vice President for Strategy and Business Development at Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems

Folks, don't go anywhere. Time now to hear from Army leaders and leading experts on where modernization stands today

what is working, what is lagging, and what programs may define the next phase of transformation

Dan, thank you. Thank you very much for having me this morning