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Shield AI is to integrate its Artificial Intelligence (AI) Pilot onto the Kratos BQM-177A for advanced AI-based autonomy, after being selected by NAVAIR PMA-281.
Shield AI will work closely with the original equipment manufacturer (OEM), Kratos, to contribute to the U.S. Navy’s objective of increasing capabilities to provide fleet protection by utilizing AI-powered crewed-uncrewed teaming (CU-T) capabilities.
Shield AI’s Hivemind is an AI pilot that enables teams of intelligent aircraft to operate and complete missions autonomously in high-threat environments, without the need for remote operators or GPS.
Hivemind is an aircraft-agnostic autonomy stack similar to the self-driving technology found in cars. It has flown on six different aircraft and deployed on hundreds of aircraft. The different aircraft include three quadcopters, the MQ-35A V-BAT, the F-16, and Kratos MQM-178 Firejet. Later this year, it will fly Kratos’ XQ-58 Valkyrie.
“This will be the eighth different type of aircraft integration we’ve done; it will be the fourth jet aircraft. We are getting faster and faster at integrating our AI pilot onto other aircraft because we deliberately architected our AI pilot product and associated software infrastructure as an open, modular platform play that can be systematically reused across DoD hardware. The last integration we did was about 165 days from contract award to first AI-piloted flights, and so we’re hoping to top that. I’m also excited to see what our AI pilot will do with the Kratos BQM-177 — an amazing aircraft capable of flying .95 Mach and as low as 6.6 feet above the ocean. Kratos has been a terrific partner in rolling out our AI pilot onto jet aircraft,” said Brandon Tseng, Shield AI’s President/Co-founder, a mechanical engineer, and a former U.S. Navy SEAL.
