Cheap, smart, deadly. The tech industry pitches a new way to wage war.

ORANGE COUNTY, CALIF. — On a sunny November morning, a pickup truck rounded a hill on a rough road through scrubland. A surveillance tower across the valley tracked the vehicle’s movements, plotting its progress on a digital map at a nearby command post.

With a mouse click on the map, a technician launched a compact robot helicopter called Ghost to investigate. As it neared the truck, its video feed showed a person getting out and launching a small drone that flew toward the command post. Another click launched a second aerial robot, Anvil, designed to ram and take down small drones.

The demonstration by defense start-up Anduril Industries showcased parts of an artificial intelligence-infused vision of warfare it hopes can transform the U.S. military under the new Trump administration. It imagines the nation defended by fleets of deadly aerial and undersea drones that can tirelessly patrol the world with minimal need for human intervention, poised to strike if ordered to.

Cheap, smart, deadly. The tech industry pitches a new way to wage war.
© Alisha Jucevic for The Washington Post

Anduril has deep ties to President Donald Trump’s tech funders and advisers. It is the most prominent among a raft of defense upstarts aiming to challenge established defense contractors by recasting U.S. military technology around nimble drones and software, instead of giant ships and expensive aircraft.

“It’s about making much-lower-cost, easy-to-produce and mass-manufacture weapons that we can resupply in a time of war,” said Brian Schimpf, chief executive and co-founder of the eight-year-old company.

That approach is winning support inside the Pentagon as it grapples with a major challenge to U.S. power just inherited by Trump. It is starkly illustrated by a military operation that took place one night this past April, after Iran fired more than 300 missiles and self-destructing drones at Israel from Iran, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon.

No one died and only a handful of missiles reached their targets — a victory for Israel and allies including the United States, who shot down most of Iran’s weapons. But that success didn’t come cheap.

The high-tech missiles that repelled the assault collectively cost hundreds of millions of dollars, military experts said. The weapons Iran fired were much cheaper: Each of its Shahed drones can be made for about $50,000, according to leaked Iranian documents obtained by Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The U.S. response included SM-3 missiles that can each cost $28 million, according to the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, a defense industry group.

READ MORE HERE