Right now, Anduril is unveiling the Barracuda household of air-breathing, software-defined expendable Autonomous Air Automobiles (AAVs) which are optimized for reasonably priced, hyper-scale manufacturing.
The Barracuda household of AAVs consists of Barracuda-100, Barracuda-250, and Barracuda-500. Every increment gives growing dimension, vary and payload capability, however all Barracudas are suitable with a number of payloads and employment mechanisms, assist quite a lot of completely different missions, and supply warfighters with an adaptable and upgradeable functionality to counter evolving threats. Barracuda-M is the munition configuration of Barracuda that delivers a extra reasonably priced, producible, obtainable, and adaptable cruise missile functionality than present choices obtainable to warfighters immediately.
America and our allies and companions do not need sufficient missiles to credibly deter battle with a near-peer adversary. Our present arsenals of precision-guided munitions could be exhausted in a matter of days in a high-end combat. The issue extends past stock alone, nonetheless: present cruise missiles are outlined by restricted manufacturing capability, nonexistent on-call surge capability, and minimal upgradeability when know-how and mission wants inevitably change. That’s as a result of present missile designs are extremely complicated, require hundreds of distinctive instruments to provide, demand highly-specialized labor and supplies, and are constructed on the backs of tenuous, brittle, and defense-specific provide chains. We’d like an order of magnitude extra weapons, and we’d like them to be extra producible, clever, upgradeable, and versatile.
The Barracuda household of AAVs is designed to rebuild America’s arsenal of air-breathing precision-guided munitions and air autos. Barracuda options superior autonomous behaviors and different software-defined capabilities, and it’s obtainable in configurations providing 500+ nautical miles of vary, 100+ kilos of payload capability, 5 Gs of maneuverability, and greater than 120 minutes of loitering time. The automobile’s quick speeds, excessive maneuverability, and prolonged ranges are made attainable by Barracuda’s turbojets, air-breathing engines that soak up air to combust their gasoline. The result’s a very smart, low-cost weapon system that’s able to direct, stand-in, or stand-off strike missions according to present necessities however quickly adaptable to future mission wants because of its excessive diploma of modularity and upgradeability.
Barracuda-100M, Barracuda-250M, and Barracuda-500M are essentially the most producible cruise missiles available on the market immediately. A single Barracuda takes 50 % much less time to provide, requires 95 % fewer instruments, and 50 % fewer components than competing options available on the market immediately. Consequently, the Barracuda household of AAVs is 30 % cheaper on common than different options, enabling reasonably priced mass and cost-effective, large-scale employment.
Designed for agile and reasonably priced hyper-scale manufacturing
Barracuda is purpose-built to convey mass to the combat. Designed from the ground-up for hyper-scale manufacturing, Barracuda manufacturing charges are designed to maintain tempo with the menace and will be doubled on-call to satisfy short-term surges in demand.
Barracuda is designed to be easy to fabricate, each by way of tooling and expertise. Designed for fast meeting at low price, the Barracuda household of AAVs solely requires ten or much less instruments to assemble, making certain that each new and present manufacturing strains will be quickly spun as much as produce AAVs at hyper-scale. The simplicity of Barracuda’s design and manufacturing course of has a further profit: Barracuda will be produced by the broad business automotive and client electronics workforce, moderately than relying solely on the a lot smaller, over-stretched, highly-specialized, defense-specific manufacturing labor pool required to provide present options.
Each Barracuda variant is made up of a handful of widespread subsystems to make sure that the missiles will be quickly optimized based mostly on altering mission wants. New subsystems will be quickly swapped into reside manufacturing strains when threats evolve and new applied sciences emerge, offering warfighters with the agility required to adapt at mission velocity. And in contrast to present options that leverage brittle, defense-specific provide chains, Barracuda’s subsystems are made up of commercially derived and widely-available elements that present provide chain resiliency, redundancy, and surge capability.
Barracuda-100 packs excessive efficiency right into a small, modular kind issue that unlocks new floor or air-launched ideas of operation for tactical forces.
Software program-defined efficiency
Whereas the simplicity of Barracuda’s {hardware} design is what permits hyper-scale manufacturing, software program is what differentiates Barracuda’s efficiency. Powered and managed by Anduril’s Lattice for Mission Autonomy software program, Barracuda is able to novel autonomous and collaborative behaviors, unlocking new ideas of employment that enhance survivability and effectiveness in opposition to massive goal units in contested environments. And, as a software-defined, hardware-enabled platform, Barracuda’s efficiency and behaviors will be quickly and repeatedly up to date to satisfy evolving mission necessities on the velocity of relevance, not like present beautiful cruise missiles that require months or years to replace.
Goal-built for versatile employment
The Barracuda household of AAVs brings unparalleled flexibility to the combat. Barracuda variants will be employed from quite a lot of completely different air, floor or maritime platforms to assist a variety of mission units. Appropriate with inner weapons bays of fifth-generation plane, exterior rails of fourth-generation fixed-wing and rotary-wing plane, MFOM launchers and Frequent Launch Tubes (CLTs), floor vessels, palletized employment from airlift plane, and extra, Barracuda supplies theater commanders with versatile employment choices.
The Barracuda household of AAVs will be configured with a variety of payloads to assist all kinds of missions.
With 500+ nm vary and 100+ lb payload capability, Barracuda-500 will be air-launched en masse to ship quite a lot of results for prolonged vary missions.
Rebuilding the Arsenal
Barracuda is the most recent instance of how Anduril is main the cost to ship reasonably priced mass and rebuild America’s arsenal of democracy. Barracuda is designed from the ground-up for producibility, flexibility, modularity, upgradeability, and affordability, delivering the potential and mass required to discourage or prevail in a high-end combat.
Anduril is deeply dedicated to rebuilding the arsenal of democracy by combining fashionable software program with innovative {hardware} improvement and hyper-scale manufacturing experience. From autonomous fighter jets to air-breathing cruise missiles, Anduril is driving a paradigm shift in air dominance and strike that’s squarely centered on reasonably priced mass and mission autonomy.
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