Top AI Product

Northrop Grumman’s Lumberjack delivered what defense AI shops have been promising. At Operation Lethal Eagle in early April, the 101st Airborne ran it through a full autonomous mission cycle — sense, decide, recommend, strike — with Palantir’s Maven Smart System in the loop instead of a human pilot.

What the hardware actually is

Lumberjack is a Group 3 attritable strike UAV — 290 lbs, 71 inches long, ground or air launchable, cheap enough that losing one is the point. The center bay is modular: load a 6-lb Hatchet munition for a one-way strike, or swap in ISR sensors and run scout missions. AI inference runs on the edge, so the bird keeps thinking after it loses link. Built for swarming.

The API piece nobody else has

This is the rare physical platform exposed to AI agents through a real interface. Lumberjack feeds into Maven, and Palantir’s Agentic Effects Agent gives DoD developers an agent-callable hook for target ID, battlefield context, and action recommendations. Locked to authorized military builds, no public SDK — but it’s the integration pattern every defense AI startup has chased. Lethal Eagle is the first time it ran on a real airframe.

You Might Also Like

• Openviking Treats ai Agent Memory Like a File System and 9k Github Stars say its Working
• Metas First Post Acquisition Move Manus my Computer Puts an ai Agent on Your Desktop
• Microsoft Agent Governance Toolkit Scores 10 10 on Owasp Agentic Risks at 0 1ms per Check
• Google x Warby Parker Android xr Glasses 599 Smart Glasses With Gemini Built in Launching q3 2026
• Agent Builder by Thesys When ai Agents Stop Talking and Start Showing