Co-Founder’s Casual Appearance Belies Deadly Serious Business

Anduril Industries recently unveiled its collaborative combat aircraft, or CCA, when CEO and co-founder Brian Schimpf took a journalist  into the hangar to show off the company’s new Fury, an unmanned autonomous CCA. It was the first time any media outlet was permitted to view the aircraft up close.

As a CCA, the Fury is designed to work in coordination with manned aircraft. Anduril developed the Fury to sense and understand everything that is happening in the airspace, and as it flies out ahead of a manned aircraft, its job is to react to protect the pilot flying in trail.

Schimpf said, "The first thing you notice about this plane is that there's no cockpit. There is no seat. There's no controls. There's no stick and rudder inside this. And there's no place for a human. This is an autonomous fighter jet. It has software inside that can sense and understand everything going on in the airspace, and [it's] able to react. And it works with a quarterback to be able to do this."

Schimpf explained, "In a combat environment, you would have these things sitting out in front, and they would detect the enemies earlier. They'd be able to engage. And it really is designed to protect those manned pilots sitting in the rear."

Co-Founder Palmer Luckey showed up to his 60 Minutes interview in shorts, flip-flops, and a colorful Hawaiian shirt, sporting a mullet and goatee. But his casual appearance does not dissuade the U.S. military, who is taking him and Anduril very seriously.

"I think I am very, very lucky that the level we are working with now is not judging Anduril on the basis of what shirt I wear or what my haircut is," Luckey said.

Anduril was founded by Luckey and Schimpf in 2017 and makes drones, aircraft, and submarines that are all designed to run autonomously. Luckey had previously turned his garage tinkering into the virtual reality company Oculus, which he sold to Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion.

Luckey then came up with the idea to flip the usual military procurement process on its head by coming to the military with finished products designed and built with the company’s money, rather than pitching an idea to the military that taxpayers would then pay the company to develop. The company has products already in use by the U.S. military and also in Ukraine, and says it anticipates upwards of $6 billion in government contracts by the end of the year.

FMI:  www.anduril.com/