Palmer Luckey Wants Startups to Remake the US Military (1)

For years, a Hawaiian-shirt wearing, flip-flop clad, smack-talking entrepreneur has been promising to disrupt the US defense industry. Now, Palmer Luckey, founder of autonomous weapons startup Anduril Industries Inc., appears to be doing it.

Inventor of the Oculus virtual reality headset, Luckey started Anduril in 2017 with backing from heavyweights including Peter Thiel’s Palantir Technologies Inc. Anduril currently builds surveillance towers and drones as well as software to automatically monitor borders and base perimeters. “We’re building tools that allow our partners and allies around the world to make themselves a lot more prickly—so that people don’t want to step on ...