Building on our February theme that physical AI and humanoid robots would move beyond factory floors and folding laundry in homes into conflict zones and other high-risk environments, US-based Foundation Robotics is now discussing potential national-security deployments of its Phantom humanoid robot along the southern border.
Fox News reporters spoke with CEO Sankaet Pathak, who said the U.S.-based startup, which develops humanoid robots for industrial and military applications, has already demonstrated the capabilities of its Phantom MK1 robots to the Department of Homeland Security for border deployment.
"We're in conversations with almost all national security government bodies, so Air Force, Navy, Army, DHS," Pathak said. "We continue to have dialogues. We're starting to negotiate contracts and some applications for them."
Pathak said Phantom MK1 is designed to navigate rugged terrain that can be difficult for vehicles, drones and fixed cameras. He said potential deployment missions could center on monitoring remote border areas, inspecting tunnels, and flagging migrant crossings.
"If drones and watchtowers were able to solve for everything, why do we still have humans at the border?" Pathak emphasized.
Pathak said Foundation could begin a limited pilot immediately and potentially undertake a larger deployment within several months.
Yet when Fox News asked a DHS spokesperson about the humanoid robots, the person said there is currently no formal arrangement in place.
"The Department of Homeland Security currently does not have any non-contractual agreements, pilots, or active prime contracts with Foundation," the spokesperson said.
In early March, Foundation co-founder Mike LeBlanc told TIME Magazine that the company is in "very close contact" with DHS regarding possible patrol deployments along the southern border.
Foundation is already a military-approved vendor and holds government research contracts worth $24 million with the U.S. Army, Navy and Air Force. This suggests that these war bots are very close to being tested in war zones.
In fact, testing humanoid robots in Ukraine, which, remember, is the world's AI weapons laboratory, could be coming much sooner than previously thought. Earlier this year, we outlined that the company sent two Phantom MK1 robots to Ukraine for testing.
By July, several Ukrainian news outlets, including United24 Media, said that its military would begin a grant competition to develop humanoid robots for military use as part of a broader push to automate the front line and reduce battlefield risks for its troops.
We suspect Foundation could receive a portion of the grant, potentially incentivizing the company to send additional robots to Ukraine for testing.
Phantom MK1 robots recently participated in a live-fire training exercise in Las Vegas, Nevada.
If and when Ukrainian forces deploy these systems for testing, the modern battlefield will provide a rapid and unforgiving test of their operational effectiveness. Just imagine the videos that would surface on X, humanoids fightings against FPV drone.
Back to the southern border, the future vision of securing the border will likely include all categories of drones (latest drone report), humanoid robots, and ground bots that will make the border highly militarized to ensure that no hybrid warfare, such as weaponizing migration flows, can be seen, like what was done over the Biden-Harriss regime years, or more recently, the invasion of the Spanish enclave of Ceuta by military-aged men.