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Anduril CEO Palmer Luckey.
- Military tech startup Anduril Industries unveiled a new kind of attack drone to the press on Thursday.
- The firm says its new "Interceptor" drone weighs about as much as a bowling ball and is capable of smashing other drones out of the sky.
- The drone has reportedly already been deployed to hundreds of military bases including conflict zones.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Anduril Industries, the military tech company founded by Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, has unveiled a new kind of attack drone.
Anduril demonstrated the drone, which is capable of locking onto other drones and then knocking them out of the air to Bloomberg and NBC news. The drone seeks out target drones, identifies them, and then asks an operator's permission to attack.
Anduril cofounder and CEO Brian Schimpf said the Interceptor weighs roughly the same amount as a bowling ball, and can go 90 to 100 mph.
"The only thing that can take out a swarm of fast drones is a bigger swarm of faster drones, and that's exactly what we're building," Luckey told Bloomberg.
Anduril
A render of Anduril's Interceptor drone.
The Interceptor is apparently ready to be deployed, as Bloomberg reports the Interceptor drones have already been shipped to "several hundred" military bases, and has been shipped out to conflict zones. Anduril declined to give any details about where exactly the drones have been sent when contacted by Business Insider.
Anduril has drawn criticism for its close work with the US government on President Trump's border wall with Mexico, providing surveillance software and sentry towers.
Palmer Luckey set up Anduril in 2017 after he was dismissed from Facebook, which had acquired his company Oculus for $2 billion three years earlier. Luckey has maintained that he was fired for his right-wing views, suggesting that a donation he made to a pro-Trump group which put up posters mocking Hillary Clinton could have been behind the firing. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told a congressional hearing that Luckey's political views had nothing to do with his dismissal.
Anduril received funding last month which bumped its valuation up to $1 billion.