$PLTR A Glimpse into Future Warfare

Palantir's Visual Navigation AI empowers Flyby Robotics F-11 and $RCAT Black Widow drones with full autonomy, even in enemy-jammed GPS scenarios.

"In the modern battlefield, GPS cannot be relied upon. This was starkly demonstrated when, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, “Ukrainian officials have found U.S.-made drones fragile and unable to overcome Russian jamming and GPS blackout technology.” GPS signals are susceptible to jamming, spoofing, or complete denial in certain combat scenarios, making them unreliable. Adversaries with advanced electronic warfare capabilities can easily disrupt GPS signals, causing drones to lose their way or even fall into enemy hands. The use of radio control in these situations is equally hazardous, as it is highly detectable and can inadvertently reveal the operator’s position, exposing them to potential attacks. Additionally, long-distance operations in hostile environments often lead to weak or broken signals, limiting the operational range and effectiveness of the drone. This all to say, the need to remove an unmanned system’s dependencies on properly functioning radio frequency is critical in modern warfare."

"To combat this challenge, Palantir created Visual Navigation (VNav), a new solution that brings Palantir intelligence and software onboard to enable autonomous drone missions in GPS-compromised areas, providing accurate navigation while operating entirely independent of GPS or radio control signals. Through the use of a simple camera and onboard compute — something many deployed drones now come with by default — it compares the drone’s position against onboard satellite imagery, allowing it to navigate without long-range drift. In essence, VNav does the same thing humans used to do before ubiquitous GPS usage: it lets the drone navigate by reading a map."