WASHINGTON — Defense technology startup Shield AI and contracting giant Boeing announced a new partnership today to investigate how to speed up delivering artificial intelligence and autonomous capabilities to warfighters.
The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding during the Air Force Association Warfare Symposium this week in which Shield AI and Boeing’s experimental Phantom Works division will “explore strategic collaboration in the areas of autonomous capabilities and artificial intelligence on current and future defense programs,” according to a Boeing press release.
Unmanned aerial vehicle operators supporting the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, prepare to launch a VBAT Unmanned Aerial System aboard amphibious transport dock USS Portland (LPD 27), Sept. 5, 2021. Portland, part of the USS Essex Amphibious Ready Group, along with the 11th MEU, is operating in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of responsibility to enhance interoperability with allies and partners and serve as a ready response force to defend peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Alexis Flores)
Shield AI will provide its Hivemind AI pilot system, which has already flown aircraft and can “enable swarms of drones and aircraft to operate autonomously without GPS, communications or a human pilot in the cockpit,” the release says.
“AI pilots are the most strategic deterrent technology since the introduction of stealth aircraft and have proven successful in flying air-combat scenarios,” Brandon Tseng, president and co-founder of Shield AI, said in a statement. “Integrating Boeing aircraft with our AI pilot would redefine what large aircraft, crewed or uncrewed, could do.”
Since its founding in 2015, Shield AI itself has acquired a number of companies focused on artificial intelligence and uncrewed aircraft. In 2021, it bought Heron Systems — the company whose AI defeated a human F-16 pilot in DARPA’s Alpha Dogfight trials — and Martin UAV, which makes the V-Bat drone.
Last year, Shield AI announced it had received an Air Force contract worth up to $60 million for a number of projects involving Hivemind. In February last year, Tseng told Breaking Defense in an interview that, as part of the contract, the company will integrate Hivemind into V-Bat. Tseng said at the time that the goal was to have swarms of three to five V-Bat drones ready for operation and production by the end of 2023, increase to 10 V-Bat swarms the next year and then up to 30 in 2025.
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