Anduril just revealed new easy-to-make, cheap Cruise missiles

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A defense technology startup named after a legendary sword from The Lord of the Rings just unveiled a new line of missiles that it says are 30% cheaper than anything else on the market.
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Anduril Industries — which raised $1.5 billion last month and is now valued at $14 billion — on Thursday revealed its “Barracuda” family of cruise missiles, which are designed to “rebuild America’s arsenal of air-breathing precision-guided munitions and air vehicles.” The line includes three products: Barracuda-100, Barracuda-250, and Barracuda-500.
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According to Anduril, each Barracuda takes 50% less time to produce, 50% fewer parts, and 95% fewer tools than any of its rivals currently on the market. The parts included in the Barracudas’ subsystems are made up of “widely available” components to hedge against potential supply chain issues.
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“As a result, the Barracuda family of [autonomous air vehicles] is 30 percent cheaper on average than other solutions, enabling affordable mass and cost-effective, large-scale employment,” the company said in a statement.
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The company last month said it plans to build Arsenal-1, an eventual factory spanning more than five million square feet that is designed to produce “tens of thousands” of autonomous military systems each year. The Barracuda missiles are intended to be made by workers trained to build vehicles and consumer electronics rather than “highly-specialized” workers in the defense industry.
“As the United States and our allies attempt to gain affordable mass with autonomous systems, weapons, and munitions, the defense industrial base must be capable of producing orders of magnitude more than it is currently producing today,” the firm said in a statement last month.
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Anduril has claimed its plans could revolutionize defense manufacturing, similar to how Elon Musk’s Tesla (TSLA) brought a software-focused approach to change the automotive industry or how SpaceX pioneered reusable rockets. It cites Tesla’s success in breaking from industry standards and focusing on software to pave the way for easier and faster developments in a way that other automakers hadn’t fully explored.
The company currently has a production facility in Rhode Island, which can make up to 200 autonomous underwater drones each year for customers like the U.S. Navy or Royal Australian Navy. It also has several factories across Georgia, California, and Australia and has invested $75 million in a new Mississippi factory making solid rocket motors.
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Anduril was founded by Palmer Luckey, the founder of virtual reality company Oculus (META) , and former Palantir executives to compete with the handful of major defense firms still active, such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin. Its backers include Counterpoint Global, Baillie Gifford, and Palantir (PLTR) founder Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.