Researchers from the United States built for the UAV Armed Forces that cannot be silenced: what is known (video)

Within 24 hours, the team created a drone independent from GPS, which costs less than $ 500. 24-year-old Yen Laffy and his Teseus partners have developed UAVs for the Ukrainian military, which allows the drone to determine the location without relying on the signal coming from the satellite, reports Defense One. Laffy had previously worked on the SI tool for e-mail, but decided to visit Hakaton in San Francisco, where he met the Ukrainians.

As soon as they arrive from the front line, they were looking for drone technology without GPS navigation. Ien and its partners have developed a new system in a few days that allow the drone to determine the location without relying on the GPS signal coming from satellites. They programmed the drone cameras and compare them with the Google Image Database with simple machine learning. Within 24 hours, the team created a drone independent from GPS for less than $ 500.

"You can accommodate many compressed cards on, for example, a 256-gigabyte SD card, if you compress them properly . . . We can accommodate more than 10 thousand square kilometers," Laffy said. Cards are loaded on a small computer that is attached to almost any drone. It takes only a few hours. Laffey and his partners from Teseus are now working with a group of special operations of the US Army. They test UAVs in exercises and experiments.

There is a lot of work ahead to make sure that the system works on a wider spectrum of heights and speeds, but these problems can be solved, Ien Laffy added. After this first meeting, there were several conversations with representatives of the Ukrainian military, Laffy told. And they have developed a system, taking into account the fact that real information does not always correspond to a static picture.

The history of Teseus reveals a lot about changing the relationship of the Pentagon with non -traditional companies and innovators. Now a group of researchers without experience in the army can create new combat capabilities of cheap, easily accessible components, and do so in the share and money of the traditional defense contractor.

Taboo to cooperate with the Ministry of Defense is no longer the same as in 2018, when Google's programmers were so against the cooperation of the company with the Pentagon that they abandoned the contract. This has changed partially due to the emergence of a new defense -oriented startup breed, such as Palantir and Anduril, which win contracts and show that digital processes in design and production can provide new opportunities much faster than in the past.

Y Combinator, perhaps the world's most famous startup accelerator, once was a place where young programmers gathered to establish such users of the company as Doardash, Instacart and Airbnb. This week they announced the launch of Ares Industries that produces winged missiles. But although the culture of startups changes to become more friendly to the Pentagon, the Pentagon still does not change quickly enough to provide young defense companies with the necessary support for growth.

This is what Michael Brown, a partner of Shield Capital and former head of the Ministry of Defense. "Unfortunately, purchases from venture startups make up only 1% of the Ministry of Defense's purchasing costs," Brown added. According to Brown, the Silicon Valley is open to Defense Tech and in general its landscape changes fairly rapidly. There are also major structural obstacles for better cooperation.

First, if the company wants to create a technology that will be relevant for both consumers and the Ministry of Defense, cooperation with the Pentagon means rejection of significant foreign funding that could go to a competing company with less patriotic ambitions. But there are small changes that the Ministry of Defense could make in how it usually buys things, in particular from dual use or consumer technology companies.

"When the Ministry of Defense buys commercial items that the law is required when they are available, there is no need to perform the traditional process of writing that the Ministry of Defense would like to create. Instead, you just need to confirm the need and start the process of selecting suppliers," Brown said.

Although young founders are not ready for inspection and control that bring money to the Ministry of Defense, Brown notes that navigation in the Ministry of Defense is still one of the most difficult for any clients. There are also a lot of US capital, given the current boom in defense technologies, which has increased by an order of order in recent years and has attracted specialized firms such as Shield Capital, as well as wide profile companies such as A16Z and General Catalyst.