Anduril Industries has released 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 (VTOL) 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 payloads to accomplish broad sets of missions and can be constantly updated to meet the threats of tomorrow.
Roadrunner-M is a high-explosive interceptor variant of Roadrunner for ground-based air defense that can rapidly identify, intercept and destroy an array of aerial threats that are up to 100 times more expensive, or be recovered and reused at near-zero cost.
Roadrunner-M was designed to address threats that extend across legacy air defense echelons, combating adversary attempts to design around gaps in current air defense 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 refueling and reuse. If the target does need to be destroyed, Roadrunner-M will swiftly do so.
Unlike legacy missile systems, all craft that are launched but not consumed can be reused. This radical shift in thinking allows for large-scale defensive launches at extraordinarily low cost, increasing redundancy for higher probability of lethality and enhancing the ability to simultaneously engage many targets.
According to Anduril, 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 operator’s engagement decision space which is critically constrained with current capabilities.
Roadrunner-M innovations include:
- Faster launch and take-off timing
- 3x the warhead payload capacity
- 10x the one way effective range
- 3x more maneuverable in G force, compared to similar offerings
A single operator can launch and supervise multiple Roadrunner or Roadrunner-M squadrons. Roadrunner-M can be controlled by Lattice, Anduril’s AI-powered software suite for command and control, or be fully integrated into existing air defense radars, sensors, and architectures to provide immediately deployable capability.
Ready to deploy today, Roadrunner went from a napkin sketch to an operationally validated and fieldable solution in less than two years.
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