Anduril brings Roadrunner drone and solid rocket motor to Australia for first time

LANDFORCES 2024 — Eager to broaden the Australian military’s knowledge of its products, which is currently focused mostly mostly on the Ghost Shark autonomous drone submarine, Anduril Australia has brought its Roadrunner autonomous air vehicle and other systems here for the first time.

Already used by the US military for air defense “in some of the most complex operational environments in the world,” David Goodrich, Anduril’s CEO for Asia, said the company thinks Australia and the Indo-Pacific region in general “could benefit from such a capability like Road Runner.”

“Anduril Australia is primarily known for the cooperative development program we do in partnership with DTSG, ASCA and the Royal Australian Navy of the Ghost Shark XL, a UUV capability, and we are far less well known for our wider land and air defense capabilities that we sell to customers all around the world,” Goodrich said in an interview the day before the start of the Land Forces conference here.

The company describes the weapon as “a radically new, recoverable, cost-effective kinetic interceptor for ground-based air defence.”

Goodrich claimed that the weapon would be particularly effective when used against targets such as the Iranian-built Shahed loitering munition used by Russia in its illegal war against Ukraine. “It’s a very cost effective way of dealing with those threats and the threats that the Houthis represent,” he said.

The Roadrunner-M on display contains a high-explosive interceptor meant to destroy an array of aerial threats up to and including larger aircraft.

One of its most interesting characteristics is its ability — after a recon mission or if it isn’t needed to destroy a target — to return to base and land at a pre-designated location for refuelling and reuse.

“This is a radical shift in an operational concept that allows for large-scale early defensive launches so you don’t have to wait for an incoming offensive weapon to be sighted. You can launch Roadrunners early, and they can loiter and get ready to be focused on a particular threat that gets detected,” Goodrich said.

In addition to Roadrunner, Anduril is displaying Anvil, a counter-drone system, Altius 600 and 700 drones for ISR and strike, the WISP (Wide-area Infrared Sensing system), used for counter drone and counter intrusion, the Long Range Sentry Tower, a radar and sensor tower designed to detect drones and other possible threats, and one of their new solid rocket motors, Goodrich said.

In June last year, Anduril bought a company called Adranos, which invented a proprietary aluminum-lithium alloy fuel called ALITEC that Anduril says can produce up to a 40 percent increase in range over other solid rocket engines.