Anduril unveils Roadrunner, “a fighter jet weapon that lands like a Falcon 9”

Main protection tech startup Anduril has developed a brand new product designed to take-on the proliferation of low-cost, high-powered aerial threats.

The product is named Roadrunner, a modular, twin-jet powered autonomous vertical take-off and touchdown (VTOL) air automobile that’s designed for low prices. Anduril has additionally developed a variant known as Roadrunner-Munition, or Roadrunner-M, a “high-explosive interceptor,” which means it will possibly carry a warhead and likewise defensively destroy aerial threats.

Roadrunner is uncommon each in look and functionality: it will possibly take-off, following, and destroying targets; if there isn’t any must intercept the goal, the automobile can autonomously maneuver again to base for refueling and reuse. As Anduril’s chief technique officer Chris Brose put it in a current interview, “We’ve basically built a fighter jet weapon that lands like a Falcon 9.”

The product was inbuilt response to the rise of fast-moving, autonomous aerial weapons that may be produced at a excessive quantity and really low value, a brand new sort of menace, Brose mentioned. Not like different options as we speak, and the legacy missile techniques that preceded them, the Roadrunner-M may also be reused.

“To my mind, this is the first recoverable weapon that has ever been fielded,” Brose mentioned. “That is a pretty cool thing. The ability to deploy […] recover it and reuse it if you don’t actually employ it in an operation to kill another drone, completely changes how operators can fight with this capability. Today, they have a limited number of interceptors and if they decide to hit go, they are not getting it back.”

There are a handful of different main enhancements versus legacy techniques, Anduril says: quicker launch and take-off time, 3 times better warhead payload capability, ten occasions efficient vary, and 3 times better maneuverability in G-forces. Like the remainder of Anduril’s household of techniques, Roadrunner-M will be managed by Lattice, Andruil’s AI-powered command and management software program, or built-in into current architectures.

The opposite huge profit is to the operator: when confronted with a fast-moving menace, Roadrunner can launch instantly, picture it, after which obtain a sign whether or not or to not interact. As a result of the product is reusable and recoverable, operators can act with out the concern that they might lose an costly asset.

Brose mentioned the corporate’s been working in lock-step with an unnamed U.S. authorities associate because it began designing Roadrunner round two years in the past.

“[National defense] often rightly gets the stereotype for just being very stodgy, very slow, very unimaginative, very unexciting,” Brose mentioned. “I think as a company Anduril is the antithesis of that and Roadrunner is the embodiment of the kind of excitement that we believe exists in national defense and we’re very eager to try to bring back.”