Foundation Future Robotics is pushing humanoid machines into a place most tech companies would rather tiptoe around: active war zones. Its co-founder, Mike LeBlanc, says the company’s combat-ready robots are meant to keep people out of the most dangerous jobs while the battlefield shifts fast toward drones, machines, and autonomy.
The company made headlines after becoming the first to send humanoid robots into a combat zone, with Phantom MK 1 units deployed to Ukraine earlier this year. LeBlanc says that was only the opening act, and that more deployments are already being discussed as the company looks toward other conflict areas, including Israel.
LeBlanc, a former Marine Corps officer who served multiple tours in the Middle East, argues that the next phase of warfare is already taking shape. “In the next five to 10 years, I would expect that humanoids, ground vehicles, drones, will be doing most of the major fighting, with humans really only doing special forces, special operations, small surgical operations on the side,” he said.
That view may sound extreme, but it lines up with what he says the company has seen on the ground. In his telling, Ukraine is a brutal example of how quickly combat has changed, with machines taking on more of the risk and human soldiers becoming a smaller part of the fight.
LeBlanc says the Phantom line was built with warfare in mind, not as a warehouse helper or a novelty robot for home use. The MK 1 units are still limited in what they can carry, which means they are mostly useful for support work like moving supplies, loading munitions, and handling other heavy tasks that would otherwise wear down troops.
Even so, the company treats those early robots as a preview of something much bigger. LeBlanc says Foundation is already closing in on the MK 2, a larger and more powerful machine that he describes as the company’s next leap forward.
He didn’t exactly undersell it either. “It is 6 feet tall, 185 pounds, as I say, created in my own image,” LeBlanc joked, before making clear that the real goal is more than just a clever demo.
According to him, the MK 2 is built to handle far heavier work than the earlier model. “The Mark II is going to be the biggest, fastest, strongest humanoid on the market. This robot is already able to pick me up. So, it’s a much larger payload than anybody else. That allows us to do heavy industrial work, but it also lets us set up heavy machine guns, bullfrogs, etc.,” he said.
That kind of language is exactly why the project draws attention and concern. LeBlanc knows the phrase “Terminator” gets tossed around for robots like these, especially when people hear about machines with battlefield applications and artificial intelligence at the center of the design.
He does not dismiss the fear, either. “I think that anyone who’s been far away from the battlefield could get rightfully very concerned that we have Terminator going out and deciding who to kill and who not to kill,” he said.
But he pushed back hard on the idea that combat robotics are about replacing soldiers entirely. In his view, the point is to absorb danger, not erase the human role, and anyone who has seen frontline combat would want the same thing.
“We had a saying in the Marine Corps: Never send a Marine where you could send a bullet first. And at Foundation, we always say, ‘Don’t send a Marine where you can send a humanoid first,’” LeBlanc said. It is a blunt line, but it captures the pitch: let the machine take the hit, let the human stay back.
Artificial intelligence is the engine behind the whole effort, and LeBlanc says that brings its own set of problems. “The AI is what really brings humanoids alive,” he said, adding that the technology should be watched closely because of how much power it can concentrate in a single system.
He compared that power to something far more serious than a typical tech breakthrough. “I think there are rightfully a lot of concerns about AI and what AI companies are doing. Because, in some way, it’s kind of the digital nuclear program. So you are seeing all of these companies that are kind of able to engage in their own atom bomb, in a way,” LeBlanc said.
That scrutiny may only grow as politics, defense spending, and private robotics keep colliding. LeBlanc pointed to criticism over the company’s links to Eric Trump, saying the attacks miss what the company actually does and why it exists.
He said the relationship has become a target simply because of who is involved, not because of the work itself. “Senator [Elizabeth] Warren has called out our company by name because we have Eric Trump as a strategic advisor. He was an investor first, and now he helps us mostly with planning our real estate, our building of manufacturing facilities, and he just loves to talk about mechanical things,” LeBlanc said.
Foundation also drew fire after winning a $24 million Pentagon contract to study humanoid robots, which sparked more accusations from critics on X. LeBlanc rejected the criticism and said the company has already faced plenty of oversight, with more likely to come as the debate over autonomous warfare keeps heating up.
For now, the bigger story is how fast the battlefield is changing and how willing some companies are to race straight into that future. LeBlanc sounds convinced that humanoid robots will keep moving forward, and that war zones will become one of the clearest proving grounds for machines built to carry weight, absorb risk, and step into places humans used to occupy.
