Anduril reveals powerful missile family with 575-mile reach, 2-hour loiter

Anduril has unveiled a new line-up, called Barracuda-M family, of cruise missiles which are optimized for affordable, hyper-scale production.

The expendable autonomous air vehicles (AAVs) belonging to the Barracuda family come in three variants – Barracuda-100, Barracuda-250, and Barracuda-500.

The three variants offer increasing size, range and payload capacity, and are compatible with a number of payloads and deployment mechanisms. The AAVs are aimed at providing warfighters with an adaptable and upgradeable capability to counter threats.

According to the company, Barracuda-M is the munition configuration of the missile that makes it affordable and more adaptable than other offerings available for warfighters today.

The company says that the existing missile designs are highly complex; require a large number of tools to produce, along with specialized labor and materials. The Barracuda family of munitions aims to change that by making the production and deployment process a lot easier to give the United States an edge in case of a war.

“The Barracuda family of AAVs is designed to rebuild America’s arsenal of air-breathing precision-guided munitions and air vehicles,” the company said in a press release.

Barracuda-M family range and features

Anduril states that the Barracuda family missiles comes with advanced autonomous behavior and has software-defined capabilities.

The missiles are available in configurations which allow 500+ nautical miles (575+ miles) of range, can carry 100+ pounds of payload and offer up to 5 Gs of maneuverability, with over 120 minutes of loitering time.

The vehicle’s fast speeds, high maneuverability, and extended ranges are made possible by Barracuda’s turbojets, air-breathing engines that take in air to combust their fuel.

The result is a highly intelligent, low-cost weapon system that is capable of direct, stand-in, or stand-off strike missions in line with existing requirements but rapidly adaptable to future mission needs due to its high degree of modularity and upgradeability, according to the company .

Moreover, the company also stated that a single Barracuda takes 50 percent less time to produce, requires 95 percent fewer tools, and 50 percent fewer parts than competing solutions on the market today.

Anduril says that this makes the missile family 30 percent cheaper on average than other solution, alongside offering affordable mass and cost-effective deployment on a large scale.

Anduril offers software-driven performance in missiles

Designed for rapid assembly at low cost, the Barracuda family of AAVs only requires ten or less tools to assemble, which gives it the capability that both new and existing production lines can be rapidly spun up to produce AAVs at hyper-scale.

Moreover, it can be produced by the broad commercial automotive and consumer electronics workforce.

All three variants can readily accept subsystems and integrate them when threats evolve, giving it an edge in terms of adaptability.

“Powered and controlled by Anduril’s Lattice for Mission Autonomy software, Barracuda is capable of novel autonomous and collaborative behaviors, unlocking new concepts of employment that increase survivability and effectiveness against large target sets in contested environments,” the company said in the press release.

The software allows for its performance and behavior to upgrade constantly with evolving mission requirements.

Barracuda variants can be employed from a variety of different air, ground or maritime platforms to support a range of mission sets. They can also be configured with a range of payloads to support a wide variety of missions.