Nathan Michael, Chief Technology Officer, Shield AI joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss why the future of warfare is autonomous.

The conflicts in Ukraine and Iran have made the case for autonomy abundantly clear. Drones create asymmetric advantage by driving down the cost per effect, delivering outcomes at reach without putting pilots and service members into harm’s way. As trust in these systems grows through engineered performance and assurance, autonomous systems will increasingly engage in combat and change the face of modern warfare.

Shield AI’s solution to the future of warfare is Hivemind, an AI pilot designed from the beginning to be platform agnostic, mission agnostic, and domain agnostic. This architecture aligns with the Air Force’s autonomy government reference architecture for the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, which mandates modularity and no vendor lock-in.

No vendor lock-in is becoming a global standard, with nations demanding sovereign autonomy, ownership of data, and the flexibility to swap in the most performant AI pilot as the technology rapidly improves. Hivemind is now expanding beyond the air and maritime domains into space through a series of defense partnerships.

Episode Chapters

0:00 How Shield AI is Thinking About Autonomy in a World Full of Conflict

1:56 Are Drones the Modern Equivalent of the Abrams Tank?

4:09 Is Society Ready for Autonomous Warfare

5:58 Developing Hivemind and the Aha Moments Along the Way

10:50 Deploying V-BAT in Ukraine and Integrating Hivemind on One-Way Attack Drones

13:59 The Autonomy Factory and Adapting Hivemind Across Platforms

17:41 Going from Air to Sea with Huntington Ingalls

22:39 Deploying Hivemind on the Airbus Lakota Helicopter for Contested Logistics

25:52 Winning the U.S. Air Force CCA Mission Autonomy Production Contract

29:37 Autonomy Government Reference Architecture and No Vendor Lock-In

35:34 Expanding Hivemind into Space

38:17 X-Bat, the World's First AI-Powered VTOL Fighter Jet

40:34 AUTNMY AI

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