Could Anduril's AI-driven drones, subs help Taiwan counter China?

Taiwan wants all the help it can get preparing for a possible, some would say inevitable, invasion from China

That includes lots and lots of drones. So the island is turning to one of the best in the biz, Palmer Luckey's Andrel Industries

Mr. Luckey himself was at Taiwan's National Zhangshan Institute of Science and Technology in early August

speaking to students about the roles artificial intelligence and other advanced technologies play in national defense

Some of the folks in attendance may in fact end up working on Mr. Lucky's latest offerings into the defense world

because the Institute and Andrel Industries just signed a Memorandum of Understanding

to procure a next-generation command and control system, along with some unmanned vehicles

Anderl just received an almost $100 million contract from the US Army to develop a next-gen

C2 system as well. The company bases its C2 systems on its Lattice for Mission autonomy software It an open source platform that takes information and data from all sorts of sensors sentries launchers vehicles or other objects and fuses all that data into one common

output, making it easier for battlefield commanders to make critical decisions, hopefully faster than the enemy can figure out what's going on. A unified and updated command

and control network will be a critical component of Taiwan's successful deterrence to or counterpunch

of a Chinese invasion, especially if Taiwan is going to be using thousands of drones

Based on recent buys, that seems likely. In July, Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense

Armaments said it has plans to build almost 50,000 drones domestically in the next two years

All of that is in addition to some of the other international deals Taiwan made with

companies like Shield AI, AeroVironment, and of course Andrel. Last year Taiwan bought 730 Switchblade 300s from AeroVironment and almost 300 of the larger Altius 600Ms from Andrel Both are tube loitering munitions which means they can circle around in the air for a while before attacking a target

The switchblades are small enough to put in a backpack. Andrel's Altius family of munitions are a little bit bigger

so they're designed to be fired from a vehicle or some kind of ground-based system

One thing worth noting here, the memorandum of understanding that Andrel signed with Taiwan's National Institute of Science

and Tech does not define exactly which unmanned systems will be worked on through the partnership

which means the door for Taiwan to collaborate on some of Andrel's larger offerings is wide open

Think the fury Andrel's offering for Tronchuan of the U.S. Air Force's collaborative combat

aircraft program. We've reported on CCAs quite a bit at Straight Arrow News, but essentially

they're going to be drone wingmen able to fire missiles, drop bombs, gather intelligence

any mission a pilot might be called upon to perform. Taiwan does not have any advanced

fighter jets like the F or F though Those are the currently available U planes with which CCAs will be teamed So it possible the Taiwan Anduril collaboration will look at fielding a fleet of CCAs as primary

aircraft. The MOU also leaves the door open for maritime collaboration, which Anduril is no

stranger to. The Anduril Dive XL is the program of record in Australia's GoShark program. The GoShark

is a modular unmanned submarine that can be configured to fire Copperheads, Andrel's answer

to unmanned underwater tube-launched vehicles. When carrying an explosive payload, the Copperhead

takes on a traditional torpedo role. The partnership between Taiwan and Andrel makes a lot of sense

Andrel is quickly becoming one of the primary forces in the defense industrial base

with a hyper-focus on technology-driven solutions and artificial intelligence. things which require advanced microprocessors to function

and no one makes more of those than Taiwan. For more reporting like this, download the Straight Arrow News app today