When Palmer Lackey was hacking virtual reality headsets at his startup Oculus VR in the mid-2010s, he sometimes imagined a future in which U.S. soldiers would use the technology to sharpen their senses on the battlefield. I was doing it.
That vision effectively became a reality with a contract to bring software from his defense startup, Anduril, to the U.S. military’s head-mounted displays developed by Microsoft.
“The idea is to strengthen our soldiers,” Lackey told WIRED via Zoom from his home in Newport Beach, California. “Their visual and auditory perception is basically what gives them all the vision that Superman has and then some, making them more deadly.”
Luckey co-founded Anduril in 2017 after selling Oculus VR to Facebook for $2 billion. His new company aimed to challenge incumbent defense contractors by moving quickly and efficiently, focusing on software, and adapting technology from the technology industry for military use.
Although primarily known for the drone and air defense space, Anduril’s core product is Lattice, a software suite that powers these tools and a platform that can be integrated with third-party systems. Today’s announcement brings Lattice to Integrated Visual Augmentation System headsets. Developed by Microsoft for the US military in 2021 and based on the company’s Hololens system, IVAS is an augmented reality display that blends virtual information with the user’s real-world perspective.
Lattice will surface more raw information obtained from drones, ground vehicles, or air defense systems to soldiers wearing IVAS. This will include data showing the movement of drones and loitering weapons, electronic warfare attacks, and the activity of autonomous systems, Anduril said. For example, it could be detected by air defense systems and alert them to drones flying beyond visual range.
Lackey says he wasn’t the first person to envision such a futuristic combat scenario. As is often the case, he drifts between science fiction and reality almost without stopping. “It’s a classic science fiction concept,” Lackey says. “Robert Heinlein pioneered the application of heads-up displays to infantry in his 1950s novel Starship Troopers.”
The Anduril co-founder certainly looks like a new breed of defense tech executive, wearing his usual Hawaiian shirt and sporting a bold hairstyle that combines both a mullet and a goatee. But he’s pretty confident in his ability to turn things around. “I think I’m one of the smartest people in the VR industry,” he says. “If that sounds arrogant, remember that it takes arrogance to start a company like Anduril.”
When Anduril was founded, some scoffed at the idea of Silicon Valley engineers learning military technology. But as the Department of Defense becomes increasingly enthusiastic about low-cost, autonomous, software-defined systems, Anduril is making a name for itself. The startup recently won a contract to develop an experimental “joint” robot fighter for the U.S. Air Force and Navy, beating out several major companies including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman.
