To expand its worldwide operations, the former acting head of procurement at the Pentagon has joined the California defence and security technology firm Anduril. Greg Kausner, who was the undersecretary of defence for acquisition and sustainment until this month, took over as head of worldwide defence for Anduril on March 14. Kausner will be responsible for reaching out to governments of US allies and partners to identify difficulties and offer Anduril’s software, engineering, artificial intelligence, robotics, networking, sensors, and other technologies to cover capability gaps.
Kausner will also engage with the US State and Defense ministries to ensure that the countries with which Anduril wants to conduct business are in accordance with “the government’s developing geopolitical scenario.”
Anduril’s international portfolio is relatively small, though it has contracts with the British Defence Ministry and recently opened an office in Australia.
Kausner previously served as executive director for international cooperation in the Pentagon’s acquisition and sustainment office. He was also a Navy fighter pilot and served two combat tours in Iraq.
“We’re in the midst of an increasingly intense rivalry with authoritarian states, competition that’s going to have significant consequences to our way of life, the values that we hold dear and the rules-based international order,” Kausner said. “Central to winning that competition is our ability to harness a new wave of emerging technology; a way that both preserves the global military balance and demonstrates responsible application.”
He said he joined Anduril because of its agility, sense of urgency and unconventional ways of doing business — but particularly because of its focus on solving the most pressing national security challenges at an increasingly perilous time.
Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, China’s status as America’s pacing threat and ongoing troubles in the Middle East, among other challenges, underscore the importance of international cooperation between allies and partners, Kausner said
At some point, Kausner said, interoperability between allied and partner militaries will require more than the same tactics, techniques, procedures and platforms; rather, there will be a need for a fusion of information sharing.
“A truly joint, interchangeable and effective future force is going to utilize common information, empowered by software, fused together in real time,” he explained. “It’s deployed unmanned systems supported by ubiquitous sensors, networked in a meshed environment and enabled by human and machine teaming. That’s the future, in my view.”Anduril’s core product is Lattice, an operating system that aims to rapidly fuse large amounts of data from sensors and allow “warfighters to collapse kill chains into minutes,” Kausner said.
News Summary:
- To boost international sales, Anduril hires former Pentagon procurement official
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