Steve Simoni, the cofounder of defense tech company Allen Control Systems, is giving me a tour of his startup’s new showroom when he points to a corner near the front window. That’s where the prototype of the autonomous gun turret they’ve built—called the “Bullfrog”—will go in about six weeks, he explains.
I’m almost surprised as I hear him say it and have to remind myself that we aren’t talking about some new virtual reality glasses or restaurant software. We’re talking about a gun turret —a real-world, real-dangerous system that can be mounted with M240 machine guns, then will use computer vision software to identify and aim at enemy drones, so a human can press a button for the system to shoot them out of the sky. If all goes as planned, these Bullfrogs will eventually be used on the battlefield by U.S. soldiers and their allies.
