Anduril Industries has launched the Roadrunner and Roadrunner-Munition (Roadrunner-M). Roadrunner is a modular, twin-jet powered autonomous air vehicle with extraordinary performance at low cost. Vertical takeoff and landing capability gives Roadrunner the flexibility to rapidly launch from and return to any location, pairing high subsonic speed with exceptional agility and stability.
The modular payload system can carry a variety of constantly-updated payloads to accomplish broad sets of missions and can constantly be updated to meet the threats of tomorrow.
Roadrunner-M is a high-explosive interceptor variant of Roadrunner for ground-based air defence that can rapidly identify, intercept and destroy an array of aerial threats are up to 100 times more expensive, or be recovered and reused at near-zero cost.
Malicious actors are increasingly using state-owned and commercially-available drone technology to threaten the personnel, infrastructure and assets of the United States and our allies around the world. Anduril already provides a counter UAS family of systems to protect against such threats, and Roadrunner-M is our newest addition to that family.
Roadrunner-M was designed to address threats that extend across legacy air defence echelons, combating adversary attempts to design around gaps in current air defence architectures.
Similar to traditional approaches to deter and defeat incoming aerial threats like scrambling expensive and airfield-dependent jets, Roadrunner-M can take off, follow, and intercept distant targets at the first hint of danger, giving operators more information and time to assess the target and rules of engagement. If there is no need to destroy the target, Roadrunner-M can simply return to base and land at a pre-designated location for immediate refuelling and reuse. If the target does need to be destroyed, Roadrunner-M will swiftly do so.
Roadrunner-M’s performance capacity is far superior than competing air defense solutions and is already an overmatch capability against current and emerging threats. Its employment methodology significantly increases the operators engagement decision space which is critically constrained with current capabilities. Roadrunner-M innovations include faster launch and take-off timing, three times the warhead payload capacity, ten times the way one way effective range, and is three times more manoeuvrable in G force compared to similar offerings on the market. Roadrunner-M squadrons can be launched by a single operator from anywhere.
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It is not about how high this autonomous air vehicle can fly, its speed, range, payload or how long it can remain on station that is important.
The most significant feature of this newly unveiled product is that it has been designed & developed using private capital, that is to say, the taxpayer has played no part whatsoever in advancing its developmental journey from a “blank sheet of paper” to a fully engineered capability that satisfies the emerging needs of the warfighter.
The technical, financial and schedule risks associated with developing a complex product like this will have been tackled using the well-established design, development, systems integration, prototyping and testing process before proceeding to the serial production phase, which means that any delays and cost overruns that might have arisen were addressed by the developer without resorting to public funds – a practice that has become the norm on military equipment programmes run by traditional defence contractors.
What’s more, entities like this that design and manufacture precision engineered products funded wholly by private finance are the only ones that employ talented engineers, problem-solvers, innovators and doers from a wide variety of backgrounds, who are absolutely committed to applying the principles of good engineering practice. The problem only arises when the State comes along with public funds, creating perverse incentives, which then leads to excessively costly outcomes for taxpayers and a useless product for the warfighter.
It is this alternative funding arrangement that makes it highly likely that the product will deliver what is says on the side of the tin, or in this case, nest.
@JagPatel3