The U.S. Department of Defense, referred to as the U.S. Department of War by the Trump administration, and Anduril Industries announced they had entered into an agreement to scale production of affordable munitions.
Anduril said it had signed a framework agreement to address the gap in pallet- and lug-launched Barracuda-500. The agreement outlines a two-phase approach that is intended to result in the procurement and delivery of thousands of Barracuda-500 vehicles per year for seven years. Initial deliveries of the munitions are expected in 2027.
The agreement comes as the DoW has said the U.S. and its allies need to augment existing munitions with a new category of affordable, mass-producible munitions. The new agreement establishes a new model for munitions procurement focusing on rapid, large-scale production of affordable munitions. Officials said it would expand America’s munitions inventories and strengthen the country’s “Arsenal of Freedom.” The agreement builds on a recent announcement of the Ground-Launched Low-Cost Containerized munitions program that has Anduril delivering 1,000 surface-launched Barracuda 500M systems per year for three years.
Under the new agreement, Anduril will deliver 8,000 of the U.S. Air Force’s Family of Affordable Mass Missiles (FAMM) program vehicles per year.
The company said it has invested more than $40 million to build a dedicated 115,000+ square-foot production facility in Southern California to meet demand for the Barracuda family of systems. The facility opened earlier this year and has already begun Barracuda variants. Later this year, production for Barracuda-500 will begin the shift to Arsenal-1, the company’s 5-million-square-foot production facility just south of Columbus, Ohio, to scale production capacity and meet additional demand surges.