The two planned to bring their respective companies’ strengths to the venture. Lamm would apply Colossal’s gene-editing technology to improve the dogs’ physical capabilities, while Luckey would equip them with advanced military equipment. The unusual mission, combined with the founders’ track records, left plenty of questions about what Warhound had planned.

Some speculated that the company intended to create cybernetic superdogs, while others accused its founders of trying to expand an industry that should instead be replaced with robots. But in a news release shared in response to the initial reporting, Warhound described a more grounded goal: rebuilding the domestic supply of dogs for the military, law enforcement and first responders.

In an interview with Military Times, Lamm and Warhound’s co-founder and chief executive David Spirk, who left a senior position at Palantir for the startup, expanded on that statement, discussing the conversations that sparked the mission, the problems they want to address and the product they hope to sell.

Together, they said they want to do more than bring the supply chain to the United States. Their plan includes cloning top-performing dogs, editing genes associated with health problems and introducing standardized training to puppies as young as two weeks old.

A meeting of minds

The idea for Warhound was born out of conversations Lamm had with Luckey beginning around April 2025. They had met at the Moonshots Summit, where they appeared as guest speakers.

“Palmer’s really excited about animals, and he knows I run both the extinction and species conservation company. So, we’re talking about all kinds of stuff, like can you communicate with animals, all these things leveraging technology, and then he started talking to me about the working dog program,” Lamm said. 

According to the Defense Department, only about 13% of the dogs trained to become military working dogs come from domestic breeders. Conversely, Warhound estimates that around 80% of the dogs are sourced from overseas, mostly Europe. Lamm described those breeding programs as “a little bit puppy millish.”

Because of supply issues and the time it takes to train a working dog, Warhound estimates that it takes roughly three years before a dog becomes operational. The company said more than half the dogs procured are ultimately deemed unfit for service, meaning the government has to “train roughly 200 dogs today to field 100 working animals tomorrow.” 

To address the problem, Lamm said his conversations with Luckey over the past 18 months have evolved from identifying the problem to figuring out how technology could help solve it.

“[Luckey] thought that Anduril could provide a lot of the tech and enabled hardware around this,” Lamm said. “And we could provide the cloning and the genetic engineering.”

The science behind Warhound

Since launching in 2021, Colossal has raised more than $435 million to fund its efforts to revive extinct animals and conserve the genetic material of endangered species. The company’s current valuation is approximately $10.2 billion.

To expand its capabilities, Colossal acquired Texas-based Viagen Pets and Equine last year. Lamm said Viagen has “very high cloning efficiencies … and Warhound will be leveraging Viagen as it relates to dog cloning, which is their core business.”

In 2025, Colossal demonstrated its capabilities by cloning former NFL quarterback Tom Brady’s dog. But cloning and gene editing are distinct processes. 

According to the National Institutes of Health, cloning produces a genetically identical copy of an existing animal, whereas gene editing involves directly altering an organism’s DNA to change specific characteristics. 

With gene editing, “you’re taking the random chance out of nature,” Lamm said, adding, “Genetic engineering is looking at the genome, finding things that are broken in the genome, wrong in the genome, or could lead to health consequences, and fixing and removing that.”

Gene editing has been used to create specific characteristics in several animal species. Scientists, for example, have used the technique to make pigs more resistant to certain diseases; cattle better suited for hotter environments; and fish grow faster. But its application in dogs remains limited.

In August, the company Kindred Companion Sciences unveiled what it described as the first genetically edited dogs. The biotech company created two hypoallergenic beagles using gene editing to remove a DNA sequence associated with a major dog allergen.

However, Lamm said he does not anticipate significant challenges to applying the technology to working dogs.

“We’re working on stuff that’s like a hundred times more advanced than, you know, a couple dog edits,” he said, referring to his team at Colossal.

“When we made our dire wolves, we made 20 edits, which included edits specifically from dire wolves in those variants that had not existed for over 12,000 years in the genome, so not only can we make edits, but we can even make edits with lost alleles,” he added.

Engineering a better working dog

While the science might not be a problem, Warhound co-founder Spirk said the company’s immediate focus is identifying “the best of the best” dogs and breeds to biobank, as well as developing the company’s “Warhound standard” for training working dogs.

He explained that a wide variety of dogs are used across federal, regional and local agencies. Warhound is working with different government organizations to identify the top-performing animals, though he declined to say which ones.

He said they are “understanding who wants what type of dog, and what the specialized capabilities of that dog are.”

“You can imagine that the dog that we need sitting outside McDill Air Force Base is much different than a dog that somebody’s going to jump out of a helicopter with,” Spirk continued.

Using genetic material collected in the biobank, Warhound scientists will map the animals’ genomes and look for opportunities to edit genes to improve their overall health, wellness and longevity before beginning the cloning process.

“Once the scientists do their magic and make these dogs, we will immediately begin training,” Spirk said, adding that their experts suggest training should begin for puppies as young as two weeks.

The idea behind early training, he explained, is to breed dogs to the highest standard, and then begin acclimating them to the tasks and conditions they’ll be expected to encounter in the field. For example, he said, a dog trained primarily on asphalt might struggle to function on a different surface, such as grass or sand.

“You’re just naturally going to have a better product coming out when we domesticate the production,” Spirk said.

The first Warhounds should be “coming off the line” in about two years, he said.  

Once Warhound figures out the right balance of nature and nurture for working dogs, Spirk said the company would like to explore ways to apply its research to the other 98 million dogs in America.

“Nobody’s ever had the resources to do it and to figure it out,” he said, adding, “It’s pretty motivating.”

Texas-based Warhound was conceived by Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey and entrepreneur Ben Lamm, who started Colossal Biosciences, a company best known for its efforts to revive extinct species.

In a press release, Warhound chief executive David Spirk said the company aims to reduce the United States’ dependence on a “shrinking” European supply chain for working dogs.

“Our long-term goal is simple: healthier dogs, better-prepared teams, and more service members and first responders coming home safely,” Spirk said, adding that he cares deeply about “protecting people and helping the animals who support them.”

Before joining Warhound, Spirk held several defense-related positions, including senior counsel at Palantir Technologies and chief data officer at both the Defense Department and U.S. Special Operations Command, or SOCOM.

According to the announcement, Luckey and Lamm conceived the idea for Warhound years ago at the annual Moonshots Summit, a gathering where entrepreneurs discuss ambitious ideas.

They recognized two challenges with military working-dog programs: Most of the canines never complete training, and the U.S. relies heavily on a foreign supply chain. 

According to Warhound, overseas suppliers provide 80% of military working dogs. The company also says the United States must train roughly 200 dogs to field 100, in part because so many fail to complete training.

Warhound plans to combine the founders’ respective areas of expertise to address those problems.

“Colossal’s science will help produce healthier dogs with characteristics suited to demanding missions, while Anduril’s technology will give dogs and their handlers greater awareness and protection in the field,” the company said.

Warhound also said it will work with the American Humane Society to safeguard the animals’ health and welfare. The company said its goal is to reduce training washouts, limit the number of dogs entering intensive training unnecessarily and enable safer, more effective missions.

In a federal lawsuit, the New Mexico Wildlife Federation, Battalion Search and Rescue and Southern Border Communities Coalition argue the Trump administration is misusing so-called “national defense areas” to circumvent longstanding restrictions on military participation in civilian law enforcement.

In a statement, Brian Netter, legal director at Democracy Forward, one of the teams representing the plaintiffs, called the “national defense area” designation “an extraordinary abuse of power with devastating consequences for the people who live, work, worship, recreate, and carry out lifesaving humanitarian work along the border.”

“Public lands do not become military installations simply because the president says so, and the military cannot be handed sweeping new authority to police civilians by drawing a line around land that belonged to the public,” he said, adding, “Our Constitution and laws impose clear limits on the use of the military for civilian law enforcement for a reason.”

The Trump administration began sending troops to the area in March 2025 to support border security and has since expanded the military’s presence along the border in other states. By April of that year, the Defense Department assumed jurisdiction over the 109,651 acres from the Department of the Interior.

The designation made the land, officially named the New Mexico National Defense Area, an expansion of Fort Huachuca for three years. The Defense Department said the designation allowed troops to detain people accused of trespassing in the military area after crossing the border illegally.

However, the lawsuit argues that the federal agencies exceeded their authority to transfer public land through emergency powers. “No statute authorizes the creation of ‘national defense areas,’ let alone permits carving one out of formerly public land,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit adds that the Defense Department has historically used such land restrictions only temporarily to protect people or property during accidents or emergencies.

“Creating a semi-permanent military zone along the southern border for purposes of immigration enforcement is directly contrary to the agency’s longstanding practice,” the lawsuit says.

Beyond alleging violations of federal law, the plaintiffs say the military zones are disrupting their work by limiting access to public lands used for recreation and conservation; supporting border communities; and providing humanitarian aid.

James R. Holeman, founder of Battalion Search and Rescue, said his organization leads volunteers who search for people in distress in remote areas and recover the remains of migrants who died crossing the border. Over the past three years, he said, the group’s monthly searches along the Arizona and New Mexico border have uncovered more than 100 death sites.

“Imagine how many more people could be found if we had the access, resources, and support to search systematically. Instead, we’re being locked out,” he said, adding that vast stretches of borderlands are “virtually inaccessible to humanitarian searchers” because of federal designations.

“Now the government is closing off even more territory. We don’t find weapons or drugs. We find Bibles, prayer cards, love notes, and the belongings of people simply trying to survive,” Holeman said. “There is no meaningful, systematic government effort to search for the missing and the dead. They don’t search, and now they’re preventing us from searching.”

In the complaint filed in federal court in the District of Columbia, Marine veteran Tristyn Edwards and active-duty Marine Morgan Stampfli allege that they experienced fraudulent charges on their financial accounts and an increase in spam messages because of the breach.

In September, the DMDC said it had discovered a vulnerability on July 16 in a file-sharing system that allowed unauthorized users to access unencrypted files containing personal information, including full names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and military occupations.

According to the lawsuit, the vulnerability exposed millions of files containing information on service members and people affiliated with the military for approximately nine months before it was discovered.

The lawsuit also alleges that the DMDC failed to “promptly notify” affected individuals, some of whom were informed two or three months after the breach was found.

“The exposure of Plaintiff and Class members’ PII will cause various types of misuse in the coming months and years, including but not limited to, unauthorized credit card charges, unauthorized access to email accounts, identity theft, and other fraudulent use of their Private Information,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit argues that the Pentagon violated federal privacy laws by failing to protect personal records and maintain compliant cybersecurity systems, despite internal warnings about issues in its systems.

The complaint cites multiple reports from the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General describing failures by both the department and the DMDC to implement adequate cybersecurity controls.

In a report published days after the breach, the OIG said that “officials have not taken the necessary actions to demonstrate that they were operating at an effective level for 14 of the 20 [Inspector General Federal Information Security Modernization Act] core metrics.”

News of the Defense Department breach emerged alongside reports of a cyberattack targeting FBI personnel files. However, the group responsible for the FBI incident has not been linked to the Pentagon breach. The department offered affected individuals 12 months of credit monitoring and identity-restoration services.

“Had [the Defense Department] properly implemented standard cybersecurity controls — such as regular review of accounts, scanning for vulnerabilities, field encryption or tokenization of sensitive PII like SSNs, and routine monitoring of system logs for suspicious activity — the Data Breach could have been avoided,” the lawsuit says.

“This enterprise licensing provides all assigned and attached personnel at any echelon within the specified commands the ability to gain MSS accounts within those domains they have authorized access,” the service said in last week’s announcement.

Maven is an AI-enabled software platform owned by the government but developed by the company Palantir. The system aggregates and analyzes data from several feeds like intelligence reports, drone video, satellite imagery, maps and more in support of real-time decision-making by commanders and analysts across services and allies.

For example, Defense Department officials say they used Maven to identify and bomb more than 2,000 distinct targets in Iran within the first 96 hours of Operation Epic Fury. Officials add that the system is used to process about 6 million pages of text per day for intelligence and operational workflows.

Ahead of a Maven training summit in August, the Marine Corps also explained that its demand for Maven has grown, noting that some 5,500 Marines used the system in the month prior. Additionally, the Marines replaced its manual process for filing Situational Reports with a Maven application.

Before the Oct. 1 agreement, the service’s license only allowed specific commands and organizations to use the AI-enabled battle management system and only through a Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, or SIPRNet. In that August 2025 rollout, the service provided dozens of units with access and training to the system.

The Marine Corps is encouraging commands to designate an MSS implementation lead for their respective organization. The service said that training materials are available on the secure website Intelink. It added that further guidance such as an MSS Implementation Plan will be published separately.

The 1st Battalion, 10th Marine Regiment, will be equipped with the Navy-Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System, or NMESIS, as part of the ongoing Marine Corps Force Design 2030 modernization plan, according to a recent release.

Lt. Col. Joseph Mozzi, the battalion’s commanding officer, called making the service NMESIS-capable “a crucial step to facilitate the maritime component commanders to fight for sea control.”

“[The NMESIS] is the Marine Corps’ emerging ground-based anti-ship missile capability, and it will also be a ground-based long-range precision fires platform,” he said in the announcement.

The NMESIS consists of an unmanned Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, or JLTV, with two Naval Strike Missiles mounted atop the chassis, according to the service.

The service added that during a 2021 exercise, Marines successfully tested the weapon system off the coast of Hawaii, where it had an effective range of 130 nautical miles. Later, it introduced the system to the 3rd Marine Littoral Regiment in 2024 and to the 12th Marine Littoral Regiment in 2025.

Earlier this month, the Marine Corps deployed NMESIS along with the Marine Air Defense Integrated System, or MADIS, to Japan’s southwesternmost island — some 69 miles from Taiwan — for exercise Keen Sword.

Although the 1st Battalion is now a medium missile battalion, the 10th Marines aren’t done with artillery.

Col. William Soucie, commanding officer of 10th Regiment, 2nd Marines Division, explained that the regiment will retain its lightweight Howitzer capabilities, with NMESIS as a complement to it.

“While the transition of the weapons platform is interesting, what makes the story compelling is that the Marines and Sailors in that formation are not changing,” he said. “They are just as good as they have always been, and they will make the platform successful and whatever mission they are assigned successful because they are phenomenal.”

The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, alongside two other groups, asks a federal court to enforce their request for information about why the Pentagon commissioned the study.

In a statement, Gillian Thomas, senior counsel for the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project, argued that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has “repeatedly, without evidence, questioned women’s ability to serve in ground combat,” aims to deliver research to validate his “biased” views.

“Now, without explanation, he has commissioned a study of women’s performance and assigned it to a researcher with a record of criticizing women’s combat readiness,” she said. “The public has a right to know why, and what he plans to do with the results.”

In January, the Defense Department commissioned a non-profit research group called the Institute for Defense Analyses, which is largely funded by the federal government, to study the topic for six months.

However, according to the lawsuit, the study was reassigned to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, or JHU/APL, in April 2026, where the lead researcher, Jane Pinelis, authored a 2015 study for the Marine Corps that found “negative effects of mixed-gender units.”

The lawsuit adds that the 2015 study “was widely criticized for its flawed design and biased analysis.” Those critics, including the Navy Secretary at the time, described it as attempting to show that men are stronger than women rather than establish minimum standards and see who could meet them.

Additionally, The War Horse reported that Hegseth relied heavily on that study to support his argument that women shouldn’t serve in combat roles in his book The War on Warriors.

“Dads push us to take risks. Moms put the training wheels on our bikes,” he wrote in the book. “We need moms. But not in the military, especially in combat units.”

In a November 2024 interview on the Sean Ryan Podcast, Hegseth shared his explicit view on the issue: “I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles.”

Although he has since softened his rhetoric on women in combat, critics say he continues to push the agenda under the guise of military standards.

According to the lawsuit, the ACLU, the National Women’s Law Center and the Service Women’s Action Network want Defense Department records showing the scope, purpose, methodology and anticipated use of the study.

The $1.1 billion program is the Pentagon’s effort to rapidly expand the domestic drone industry by having companies submit small unmanned aircraft systems, or sUASs, for competition and then building stockpiles of the systems that perform best for military use.

Erin Cherry, the program’s test lead, told Military Times in an email that DIU is looking to recruit about 100 pilots for the program’s next phase, known as Gauntlet III. But the larger goal is to create a standing registry of drone operators across the military services.

“There’s no cap on the registry,” Cherry said. “We want to hear from any warfighter with FPV experience.”

She explained that service members selected to participate will get “stick time” with some of the newest drones, including systems that are not yet in military service, and some will receive specialized training on one-way attack drones.

“Most importantly, Gauntlet results strongly inform which systems move forward, and these pilots are the ones flying,” Cherry said.

The DIU announcement specifically calls for troops with experience flying FPV drones, which are typically flown manually in “acro” mode and are used for missions ranging from reconnaissance and surveillance to kamikaze attacks and close-quarters combat.

But Cherry said DIU is looking for more than just experienced FPV pilots.

“‘Pilot skill’ isn’t just one thing,” she said. “Flying ability, tactical knowledge, payload experience, and specialized skills like long-distance navigation and urban flight are all distinct, so we look at each one.”

That variety is important because the drones will ultimately be used by more than just the military’s most experienced operators.

“A drone that only performs well in an expert’s hands isn’t ready for the force,” Cherry said, adding that “whether someone has been flying FPV for five years or five months, we want to hear from them.”

For service members interested in participating, DIU is asking them to complete a Pilot Interest Form. Officials will only respond to applicants using a valid .mil email address, and all pilot participation will be coordinated through the individual military services.

The service is adding the evaluation following guidance issued by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who announced the Joint Warfighter Evaluation, or JWE, in late September.

Lt. Gen. Thomas B. Savage, commanding general of Training and Education Command, called the JWE “an objective data point that complements what we already know about an officer’s performance and potential.”

“The Marine Corps has always taken pride in its talent management and selection processes, which have historically produced some of our nation’s greatest leaders,” Savage said.

He added that the evaluation will provide “another opportunity for our rising leaders to confirm that they have assimilated the skills necessary to epitomize the next generation of general officers who will excel at the highest levels of command.”

Brig. Gen. Matthew Tracy, commanding general of the service’s Education Command and president of Marine Corps University, said the service’s JWE will provide “a complex, realistic environment” to challenge Marine officers’ capabilities on the evolving battlefield.

According to the service’s announcement, the JWE will complement existing performance evaluations by assessing an officer’s ability to develop and communicate plans and demonstrate critical thinking.

The evaluation will be administered through the Marine Corps e-Learning Ecosystem, allowing eligible officers to complete it from their assigned duty stations.

During the evaluation, an officer will assume the role of a senior Marine commander conducting an all-domain operation in support of a joint task force against a peer threat.

The officer will “respond to commander-centric requirements during planning and execution and provide written products and decisions,” the service said.

The work will then be evaluated by a hand-selected board of experienced subject-matter experts from across Marine Corps University. The board will be chaired by either a brigadier general or major general.

The Marine Corps expects to implement its JWE no later than February 2027.

According to the statement of work, the app will provide dietitian services to SOCOM troops by coordinating with dining halls to develop meal plans that “optimize human performance and lethality.”

The platform will connect a team of up to 55 performance dietitians to provide “personalized, mission-specific nutrition plans” for more than 18,000 tactical troops across geographically disparate locations, according to the document.

Teamworks Tactical Solutions’ “core business,” according to James Coffos, Teamworks’ chief strategy officer, includes working with Division 1 athletes to professional and Olympic-level athletes.

“With stakes literally being life and death in the tactical context,” Coffos said, “when looking at a software platform to run your HP program, it makes sense to look to a system like Teamworks, which has been proven at the very highest levels of human performance.”

The contract comes as the Pentagon works to improve fitness standards and rally against “fat” troops, but Coffos said the app has already been in use by the U.S. military.

“SOCOM has actually used this particular product for years, so this isn’t an entirely new capability for them,” he said in an email to Military Times.

The original contract was through the Air Force Research Laboratory’s STRONG Lab, but the new contract moves the agreement directly to SOCOM.

Coffos said his company worked with SOCOM’s senior performance dietitian to tune the software to better suit the organization’s needs.

“It’s really a great situation where we have this virtuous circle from sport to military and back again,” he said.

The app allows SOCOM troops to engage with dietitians in two ways. They can see nutritional ratings for options at the chow hall, or, when military dining facilities are not available, they can ask for guidance regarding the food available to them.

“It just removes a lot of friction from the process of making good decisions around what you’re eating, and that in turn frees an operator up to focus on the mission at hand,” Coffos said.

Troops can also adjust their plans based on food preferences and personal goals. But the technology does not eliminate the need for individual decision-making, Coffos said.

“You still have to have a basic understanding of nutrition and the willpower to choose what your body needs versus what just looks like it tastes best,” he said.

As for how the app improves “lethality” through diet, Coffos explained it depends on how the term is defined.

“I’d start by pointing out that ‘lethality’ is SOCOM’s word, not ours,” he said. “But I’d also gently point out that the word isn’t at all foreign to sports.”

He explained that it’s often used to describe performance by professional athletes, like “Mariano Rivera was described as lethal for 19 seasons and no one thought twice about it” or “Steph Curry is lethal from 30 feet.”

But he has come to understand the term, at least in the case of SOCOM, as a reference to maintaining physical performance deep into an arduous mission.

“When SOCOM writes ‘lethality,’ I really think what they’re describing is the mile-22 problem,” he said. “It’s about the quality of the human being at the end of the effort, not the beginning.”

He compared the nutritional demands of a special operator on a long mission to those of a marathon runner nearing the end of a race.

“Watch a marathon at mile 22. You’re absolutely going to see somebody who was running beautifully at mile 18 reduced to a shuffle, and it isn’t because they got less fit in the last four miles. They ran out of fuel,” he said.

In the case of SOCOM, Coffos said, imagine an operator about 20 hours into a mission, carrying about 65 pounds of gear and running on about four hours of sleep.

“That’s the same physiology and the stakes are the only thing that changed,” he said. “When SOCOM writes ‘lethality,’ I really think what they’re describing is the mile-22 problem.”