What might a military look like when drones carry out missions together? A futuristic film centred on Anduril makes the idea visible: one machine observes, another heads towards the location, and the others share information. These are drones working as a team, with software coordinating their tasks.
The film below imagines such a future around US defence company Anduril. It is a speculative concept film by independent creator Storyforge Imaginarium, not an official Anduril production or footage of a real operation. But its central idea connects with something Anduril is genuinely working on: making different uncrewed systems function as one team.
From separate drones to a team
Owning ten drones does not automatically give you a well-coordinated team. Each machine needs to know the mission, which information is useful and what the other aircraft are doing. Otherwise, one drone might collect images another cannot use, or several might unnecessarily fly to the same place.
Anduril’s answer is called Lattice. The software combines data from different sensors into one picture of the situation. It supports operators’ decisions and can relay tasks to crewed and uncrewed systems. The aim is fewer separate screens and actions, so people can focus on the mission.
Give the mission without steering every turn
Anduril is also developing software for what it calls mission autonomy. This means a machine does more than follow a route: it manages part of the execution within an assigned mission. Think of a reconnaissance task in which several drones divide the search area. That illustrates the intended approach, not a demonstrated operation shown in this film.
US Special Operations Command selected Anduril in March 2025 for a three-year, $86 million contract to further develop and integrate such software. This also involves other suppliers’ systems. That makes the technology more interesting than a collection of one brand’s drones: different machines need to carry out a mission together.
Real hardware is part of the picture too
Anduril is developing Fury, for example, an uncrewed jet in which Lattice will play a role. An aircraft has different capabilities from a small drone: it can carry different sensors or payloads and perform different missions. The software needs to make those differences useful within a larger system.
The film makes that future look appealing and easy to follow. In practice, a team must keep working with incomplete information, lost connections or a failed aircraft. Automatic navigation is also different from permission to use a weapon. Which decisions people make and which tasks the software executes remain essential design questions.
The biggest innovation is not visible from the outside
A futuristic shape attracts attention. But the larger promise is a system in which one observation becomes useful to several machines, without having to repeat the same mission instructions. If that works reliably, more than the drone itself changes: so does the number of uncrewed systems a military team can operate at once.
