Defense technology company Allen Control Systems (ACS) announced it has raised $12 million in seed capital led by Craft Ventures with participation from Forum Ventures and Rally Ventures. Austin, Texas-based ACS is developing counter-drone robotic gun systems.
Enemy forces worldwide are rapidly deploying low-cost, lethal, and autonomous drones. While radio jamming can stop many off-the-shelf commercial drones, autonomous military drones are designed to continue missions even when their radios are jammed. Until now, the only way to disable military drones was to physically damage them, which required expensive missiles. ACS is building novel technology capable of neutralizing large numbers of lethal drones at a much lower cost than any solution available today.
CEO Steven Simoni, CTO Luke Allen, and COO Mike Wior launched ACS. Simoni and Allen are former U.S. Navy nuclear engineers who met while in the service. Both of them were instrumentation and control systems engineers for Navy nuclear reactors. And their backgrounds span robotics, computer vision, AI/ML, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and computer science. After serving in the Navy, Simoni and Allen launched Bbot, a software and robotics restaurant technology startup, where they met Mike Wior, CEO and co-founder of Omnivore, a restaurant POS transaction system. In 2022, Simoni and Allen’s company was acquired by DoorDash and Wior’s company was acquired by Olo.
KEY QUOTES:
“We are at a military disadvantage with our biggest rival. ACS was created to neutralize the threat of Chinese drone manufacturing dominance. DJI, the Shenzhen-based manufacturer, commands over 70% of the world’s drone market and makes a new drone every few seconds. With respect to drones, any serious dual-use mandate from our Government is about 20 years too late.”
– ACS CEO Steven Simoni
“ACS’s products are designed with an assumption that military drones will be numerous and will be hardened against radio jamming and other long-range non-kinetic attempts at stopping them. But drones can’t carry sufficient armor to stop a bullet. The downside of bullets is that aiming a gun with sufficient precision to hit a small drone is almost impossible. We understand how hard that problem is, and we believe we’re well-positioned to solve it.”
– ACS CTO Luke Allen
