Anduril

Anduril used the U.S. military's Northern Strike exercise in Michigan to field-test two sensor systems built around a single idea: watching airspace and waterways without broadcasting a radar signature that gives away your own position. The launch pairs Wisp, a fully passive, AI-enabled, 360-degree wide-area high quality imaging system that enables persistent automated threat detection and situational awareness , with a Long-Range Camera Tower that provides persistent electro-optical surveillance over large areas, allowing operators to maintain visual tracking of airborne objects at significant distances . During the exercise, both systems tracked small drones, larger aircraft, and surface vessels at range without emitting any signals of their own. The audience is straightforward: base defenders, counter-UAS operators, and force protection planners who need to see incoming threats first and stay hidden while doing it. Wisp relies on artificial intelligence for passive full-motion 360-degree persistent automated threat detection and situational awareness , and the infrared core traces back to Anduril's 2021 acquisition of Copious Imaging, whose Wide-Area Infrared Sensing with Persistence (WISP) technology has since been folded into the broader product line. The timing matters because active radars used for counter-drone work are themselves easy to locate and jam, a vulnerability sharpened by the pace of Chinese and Russian unmanned system development. Anduril was founded on April 20, 2017 by Palmer Luckey, Trae Stephens, Matt Grimm, Joe Chen, and Brian Schimpf, is headquartered in Costa Mesa, California, and is led by CEO Brian Schimpf with Trae Stephens as chairman . Northern Strike gives the company a live-fire venue to show that its passive sensing stack works alongside the radars, effectors, and Lattice command software it already sells to the Department of Defense, positioning Wisp and the Long-Range Camera Tower as the quiet front end of a larger integrated air defense picture.