Anduril Industries and General Dynamics Land Systems are collaborating to integrate Anduril’s Spark radar into new ground vehicle designs, a move that shifts defensive capability from add-on kits toward native, factory-integrated sensors. The partnership seeks to address the growing challenge posed by small unmanned aircraft, precision munitions and other modern threats that can overwhelm legacy detection systems when sensors are siloed or awkwardly retrofitted. Built-in installation promises better performance, easier maintenance and a cleaner upgrade path compared with retrofitting sensor packages after vehicles have been produced. Spark is an agile X/Ku-band radar suite developed for maneuver protection. According to Anduril, the radar can track small Group 1 drones out to approximately 10 km, larger Group 3 UAS to around 18 km, and ground vehicle movements up to roughly 12 km — ranges that support early warning and engagement decisions within tactical timelines. Importantly, radar outputs will be shared across the formation via Lattice, Anduril’s command-and-control fabric, allowing multiple platforms and command nodes to see and act on the same tracks. This federation of data supports quicker, coordinated responses and reduces the likelihood of single-point sensor failures undermining situational awareness. The integration is being pitched as the first step toward distributed, multi-vehicle protection: starting with armored platforms and moving outward to command posts, launchers, and fire control elements. The underlying concept is to convert a fleet of individual vehicles into a cohesive protection grid where sensors, shooters and controllers are interconnected. Doing so enables layered defenses and more flexible rules of engagement, letting command authorities route threats to the most appropriate countermeasure. From a logistics and sustainment standpoint, integrating Spark at the design stage streamlines cabling, power, cooling and software interfaces, which lowers total lifecycle complexity and cost. For armies grappling with proliferating cheap aerial threats, the combined Anduril–GDLS approach provides a pragmatic roadmap for scaling protection across fleets — one built on networked sensing and timely command-and-control rather than isolated, platform-specific armor solutions.
