RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – Blue Force Technologies, which is developing an autonomous drone called The Fury with “fighter like” performance, has been sold.
The new owner is California-based Anduril Industries, which is focused on the defense industry and now is adding weapons to its offerings.
“This, for us, is about building a different kind of industrial base that can support real large scale autonomous system production and fielding,” Chris Brose, the company’s chief strategy officer, told Defense One.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
However, Andruil said it would continue to invest and expand operations in the Triangle. Blue Force recently expanded to Wake Forest. It has some 90 employees.
Andril calls Blue Force a “developer of autonomous aircraft with an integrated aerostructures division that serves a wide range of defense and commercial customers.”
Andruil already has developed a key to operate drones called Lattice for Mission Autonomy.
It’s an “artificial intelligence-enabled software platform that enables teams of autonomous systems to dynamically collaborate to achieve complex missions, under human supervision.”
The jet-powered Fury has been under development since 2019. Brose told Defense One the Fury is “a mature aircraft,” and that Anduril plans to “marry” its Lattice for Mission Autonomy with Fury.
“Fury leverages proprietary rapid prototyping, digital engineering and an open architecture that is designed to deliver next-generation flight performance with the flexibility to integrate heterogenous sensors and payloads to support air dominance missions. Recently, the company successfully completed a flight test of the flight software on board a VISTA, Variable Stability In-flight Simulator Test Aircraft, and a ground test for Fury’s novel carbon fiber composite propulsion flowpath system,” Andruil noted.
The company will make “significant investments to continue the development of the Fury autonomous air vehicle, expand manufacturing operations in North Carolina and accelerate development of technologies critical to future capabilities such as autonomous collaborative platforms,” it added.
