Defense hackathon held on US aircraft carrier USS Hornet to support Ukraine (photo)

The event was designed to address pressing national defense challenges and support Ukraine in its fight for freedom.

On November 23-24, 2024, the Defense Tech Hackathon was held aboard the aircraft carrier USS Hornet in California. This was reported by “Militarnyi”.

The Defense Tech Hackathon brought together key players in the technological and defense sectors. In particular, the hackathon was attended by the Defense Technology Innovation and Development Center of the Ministry of Defense (Brave1 cluster), as well as representatives of the US Special Operations Forces, engineers from MIT Lincoln Labs, Anduril and Palantir companies, and current and former military personnel.

In total, more than 700 participants, 400 developers, 50 investors and founders of startups took part in the event. The hackathon participants worked on tasks formulated at the request of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, which ensured the practical value of the developments.

Participants developed defense projects in the following areas:

• autonomous systems and counter-drones: creating solutions for GNSS navigation, drone swarm management, and optical countermeasures;

• communications: cleaning radio signals and analyzing enemy intercepts;

• reconnaissance: using AI to make decisions and detect drones in real time.

Following the two-day event, 37 teams presented their projects, among which the jury selected 11 finalists and then the winners. The best teams shared among themselves cash prizes and prizes from leading Ukrainian technology companies.

“Thanks to the hackathon, we received 37 cool projects, the implementation of which will help solve real tasks in the defense sector in Ukraine. And most importantly, we involved 400 of the best engineers in Silicon Valley to work on Ukrainian issues. We made our problems visible to them, brought them closer to our reality. And maybe after that one of them will become an employee of the Ukrainian Defense Tech sector,” said one of the organizers of the event, Nazar Hulyk.

Earlier, USM wrote that the US Navy is designing a military boat with artificial intelligence.