Anduril Industries announced its Roadrunner and Roadrunner-Munition (Roadrunner-M) last December:
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.
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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, you can reuse all craft that are launched but not consumed. 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.
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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.
I seriously doubt that Roadrunner is cheaper than the $500 most combat drones now cost. It probably does cost less than the giant, long duration drones like Predator and its successors, but then again, so does a Stinger missile.
McChuck AFAIK once you’ve launched a Stinger I don’t think there’s any way to say Oops. I also don’t think that $500 combat drones have the range or speed to intercept a high-speed high-altitude target. If Roadrunner lives up to the claims on the website it would change the game completely.
The $500 combat drones have a middling range, true, but they’ve killed tens of thousands of men and destroyed hundreds of armored vehicles.
The roadrunner also cannot intercept and destroy a high-speed, high-altitude target. It’s made to intercept other drones, which are relatively slow and generally fly under 15,000 feet.
As far as ‘oops’, target identification is important, but accidents will always happen in war. Back in the 1990′s American planes shot down American helicopters in Iraq, despite the fact the helicopters were an American type Iraq had none of, were displaying American markings, and had IFF transponders on.
McChuck,
Anduril is real people and serious, above all they are Americans who care about America.
Ukraine is none of these things, and they are claiming 10,000 lost drones a month, that’s 60 Million annual.
…but I don’t believe them.* that is the Ukrainians.
Nor do I believe Drones have killed ‘tens of thousands’ but I’m open to data or information same…
There’s no cheap lunch in War McChuck.
*see I think the American military advisers ARE checking headcount and not paying for phantom units, with the results = real corpses. Real as in 350 KIA per each of the 143 square miles taken in the summer great offensive. But they’re not checking probably that the Ukrainian figure of 10,000 destroyed drones per month….which seems excessive for no gains. (poo)
As of the beginning of December 2023, Ukraine had lost over 1.1 million dead. Most of those by artillery and drones. The drones also spot for artillery, making it more deadly than ever.
Check the map in this recent update on the war, showing the “success” of the 6 month offensive by Ukraine. Also note that the “drone attacks” don’t include the small battlefield drones that are doing the real killing. Both sides are now using them like grenades to clear trenches and bunkers.
https://www.ft.com/content/4351d5b0-0888-4b47-9368-6bc4dfbccbf5
Then there was the second Nagorno-Karabach war in 2020, where the Turkish backed Azeris wiped out the Armenian military in a couple of weeks using drones and artillery.
I’m familiar as one can be from reading about the Nagorno Karabahk war. The Armenian side was equipped with decades-old USSR air defenses that weren’t upgraded. However, digging into it further: the Turks had their client the Azeris equipped with the absolutely essential EW [Electronic Warfare] systems that allowed the drones to operate far more freely than is the present case in Ukraine, for that matter the case all along. The same drones from Turkey meeting updated Russian EW did not perform nearly as well.
It seems to be the case that Russia now has a far more permissive air environment, as Ukraine’s — and the West’s — air-defense arsenals are depleted. The Russians are even using manned air now. The Russians seem to have established near air monopoly on the line of contact, and the Ukrainians have to walk the last 4–6 miles to the line of contact, formerly called the Front.
I don’t have any data that drones are doing “most of the killing” or did most of the killing. What data is available indicates artillery, especially dumb, unguided rounds that can’t be jammed, are doing most of the killing. Nothing new about artillery being the number one killer.
I’m not against drones; it’s a tool. It works best in a permissive environment, both electronically and kinetically. If it can be jammed, and they can and are jammed, they become distinctly less useful. If they can be shot down, they are shot down.
There’s a variety of active and passive countermeasures to drones. FPV (First Person View) Drones are cheap and expended by the thousands per month in Ukraine. I agree this is cheaper than blood. FPV drones can have the control link broken. Then then become useless, however cheaper than blood, and drones support the narrative .
What does seem to be a big drone winner on the Ukraine Front now are loitering munitions. They hover above until they see a target then strike it. Again, we don’t know how they’ll do in contested airspace, whether that’s contested by weapons or electronic warfare [jamming, etc].
I’ve seen too many of these fads, and they’re seen too often in history to believe in the free lunch, or the cheap lunch. Remember Saint Javelin? Saint Javelin is hardly ancient history.
I absolutely support going forward with drones and more importantly drone countermeasures. I think these TOOLS should be integrated and more importantly trained on down to the company and platoon level. I support in principle the USMC’s current reorganization, in which a minority of their regiments are being reorganized along these lines, and with rocket artillery. I think the Marines will regret it if they go too heavy on PGMs [precision guided munitions] as opposed to fused and boom artillery or for that matter rocket artillery that doesn’t need guidance or GPS. FROG, that is free rockets over ground, will always be a winner. They’re not cheap as they must be bought in bulk, but they work and go BOOM.
I also think we need to always take the mortars, but that’s the most useless commodity in American warfare EXPERIENCE talking.