CBP Awards Anduril $25 Million for Autonomous Surveillance Towers at Border

U.S. Customs and Border Protection awarded Anduril Industries a $25 million contract for autonomous surveillance towers (ASTs) along the U.S.-Mexico border, with plans to deploy 200 towers by 2022 in a relationship worth more than $200 million. The AST system combines Anduril’s radar-equipped Sentry towers with its Lattice AI software platform to autonomously detect, track, and classify movement using computer vision algorithms. According to CBP, an AST ‘scans the environment with radar to detect movement, orients a camera to the location of the movement detected by the radar, and analyzes the imagery using algorithms to autonomously identify items of interest.’ The contract represents Anduril’s breakthrough into large-scale government surveillance infrastructure, applying Silicon Valley AI capabilities to border militarization. CBP’s 2023-2024 budgets earmarked $204 million for this program, creating what appears to be an exclusive arrangement with Anduril that raised concerns among competitors and privacy advocates.