Starting with Eric Trump as an adviser is testing humanoid robots in Ukraine. Seeking US frontline recruits within 18 months.

Foundation Future Industries, San Francisco founded in 2024, sent two of its Phantom MK-1 humanoid robots to Ukraine earlier this year. The company described it as the first known deployment of humanoid robots in a theater. These tests, supported by the US government and carried out by Ukrainian officials, focus on the use of materials in hazardous areas.

Chief executive officer Sankaet Pathak told CNBC that the MK-1 test proved that the robots can make pickups that currently put soldiers at risk. The robots carry about 44 kilograms. They don’t have waterproofing and enough battery life for long-term use.

The Foundation plans to send upgraded Phantom 2 units to Ukraine this year. Pathak says they will be “superhuman abilities” and double payload capacity. The company is targeting delivery to the US military within 12 to 18 months.

The dimension of politics is unavoidable. Eric Trump, the second son of a sitting president, recently joined the Foundation as a senior strategic advisor. The company received $24 million in government research contracts across the Army, Navy, and Air Force to test the feasibility of reconnaissance, logistics, and weapon handling.

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said the contracts “damage to the eyes in the open.” A spokesperson for the Foundation told CNBC that Eric Trump had been an investor before he became an adviser.

Pathak is best known for leading Synapse, a fintech platform that declared bankruptcy in 2024. The Foundation also attracted scrutiny after it suggested it had close ties to General Motors, claims GM later rejected. The credibility of the company is a living question.

The military debate of humanoid robots is focused on urban battlefields. “Modern urban combat spaces, where there are stairs, stairs, basements and small corridors, created for the movement of people,” said Kateryna Bondar, senior fellow at CSIS. Humanoid systems can have advantages over tracked or quadruped robots in these situations.

The counterargument is cost and difficulty. “Making robots look human is a complex and expensive engineering challenge,” said Melanie Sisson on the Brookings Foreign Policy program.What Ukraine has taught us is the opposite, that we need the ability to adapt quickly and to produce quickly and cheaply.“

The war in Ukraine is already the first testing ground for AI and robots in combat. Ground robots deliver goods to the front lines. Autonomous drones conduct precision strikes. Conflicts create performance data that quiet time testing cannot replicate.

The European defense sector is moving rapidly towards independent strike systems. Berlin-based Stark raises 300 million euros for a 2.5 billion euro deal for kamikaze drones. Destinus produces 2,000 cruise missiles annually through a joint venture with Rheinmetall. These companies build purpose-designed weapons. The Foundation is trying to make a humanoid do the same job.

Pathak said another weaponized use of the Phantom robots would be to keep human verification in the decision loop. In some critical situations, robots will need to make completely autonomous decisions. The ethical implications of autonomous risky decision-making remain unresolved internationally.

The Foundation’s ambitions are huge. Pathak plans to scale production to thousands of units this year. The aim is to deliver”the best robots we can build” in the US military, “better than anything China has.” China has its own leading humanoid companies and has funded military robot programs, although the extent of testing remains unclear.

The broad humanoid market is segmented by specific use cases. 1X ships home robots for $20,000. Colin Angle is building robots to accompany them with bear ears. The Foundation is building robots that carry cargo using artillery fire. The technology is the same. The apps couldn’t be more different.

Toby Walsh, senior scientist at the University of New South Wales AI Institute, expects tracked, flying, and underwater robots to replace humans before humanoids are created. “It might be a science fiction trope to expect hunoid terminator style robots,” he said. The age of AI robots in the military is at hand. Whether they need to look like humans to fight is a question the Foundation is spending $24 million in government contracts to answer.