Anduril, a defense tech company led by Brian Schimpf, predicts software-heavy warfare, hidden operations becoming harder, shifting alliance structures, and rapid production as key to winning future conflicts.
Anduril has raised $5 billion, doubling its value to $61 billion. The company's CEO, Brian Schimpf, shared his thoughts on the future of warfare in a letter sent to investors in January. Here are four predictions from Schimpf:
The Future of War is Software-Heavy According to Schimpf, AI and autonomy are transforming military scale, favoring forces that can coordinate large numbers of connected, software-enabled systems over relying solely on expensive weapons. Anduril's autonomous drones and vehicles are underpinned by its Lattice OS platform, a digital command-and-control center using AI to integrate data from various sources. Future conflicts will be decided by the ability to generate targeting faster, deliver effects at range in volume, and deny adversaries the same capabilities, Schimpf argues. Distributed, software-defined systems for sensing, targeting, and strike are essential, requiring continuous updates rather than fixed configurations.
Hiding Will Be Harder, Making the Deep Sea More Important Autonomous advances in sensing will make it nearly impossible to conceal military activity across air, ground, and surface domains, Schimpf notes. This shift makes underwater operations disproportionately important as a domain where detection remains challenging. Militaries must improve mass (concentration of combat power), dispersion, and resilience to survive environments more easily detected and targeted.
Alliance Structures Are Going to Shift Schimpf predicts the world has entered a new Cold War period with regional conflicts and managed competition between the U.S. and China. The U.S.-China relationship will likely follow a framework of containment and managed competition, maintaining common rules while avoiding open conflict. This dynamic will force allies to take on more responsibility for regional deterrence, leading to shifting alliance structures.
Future Conflicts Will Be Won by the Ability to Produce at Scale Deterrence depends on how quickly countries can rebuild combat power and turn technological advances into military capability at scale. Schimpf argues that the side adapting fastest shapes competition's terms. Future conflicts will require intelligent mass—a mix of high-end and scalable systems combining precision with producibility. The production timeline for lower-end capabilities must shrink from decades to months or years, challenging the traditional defense-industrial model focused on low-rate production over decades.
In summary, Anduril’s CEO envisions a future where software plays a central role in warfare, making hidden operations increasingly difficult and necessitating intelligent mass production strategies. These predictions highlight significant shifts in how conflicts will be fought and won in the coming years.
