Lockheed Martin CEO details AI-powered plans to destroy dozens of enemy drones
Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet joins ‘Mornings with Maria’ to discuss the future of AI-driven warfare and the Alabama arms company’s new 87,000-square-foot factory.
A top US defense contractor has pulled back the curtain on AI-powered next-generation systems designed to hunt down and destroy large numbers of enemy drones as the US rapidly ramps up its next-generation combat capabilities.
“We incorporate all kinds of technology into our systems,” Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet told FOX Business on Thursday, describing the company’s AI-powered counter-drone system, Sanctum.
Taiclet said the system uses artificial intelligence to detect incoming drones, determine if they are dangerous and predict where to go before they are intercepted or disabled.
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Jim Taiclet, chairman and chief executive officer of Lockheed Martin Corp., speaks during a visit with then-President Joe Biden, not pictured, at the company’s headquarters in Troy, Ala. on Tuesday, May 3, 2022. (Andi Rice/Bloomberg via Getty Images/Getty Images)
“This technology alone is very good at being able to hit a missile in space and destroy an offensive missile that threatens our people, threatens our bases, threatens our allies,” he said.
“But along with that, we have to match – with technology – other threats, and we want to match the threat with the cost of our countermeasures.”
The company is also focused on a device called MORFIUS, a system that can fly close to small enemy drones and “pep” them with high-powered microwave pulses before moving on to the next target.
“This drone we are building with the help of AI will enable us to attack 50 different drones in one mission without firing any weapons,” he shared.
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Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company facility in Fort Worth, TX, USA. (iStock Editorial / Getty Images Plus / Getty Images)
Taiclet also talked about the company’s investment in an internal AI center in 2020 and praised the pipeline cooperation with chip maker Nvidia, which provides the graphics processing units, or GPUs, used to support these national security machines.
He also explained how Lockheed is repurposing existing weapons from the battlefield to create cheap, high-risk defenses against drone attacks.
Specifically, the company has converted Hellfire missiles – typically used as air-to-air weapons on Apache helicopters – into low-cost surface-to-air interceptors capable of taking down enemy drones.
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“We are actually showing that we can do that too,” he said.
“We basically have a four-pack of these Hellfire missiles. We’ve retrofitted it with new technology. We’re connecting it with the Sanctum AI, and now we can use that type of missile to destroy these cheap incoming drones.” he added.
“Those are some of the ways we use technology and Nvidia has been a great partner for us in this.”
