Defense tech company Anduril Industries has been awarded a five-year contract worth up to $200 million to develop and supply a drone defense system to the U.S. Marine Corps, in the latest win for the Orange County startup.
The announcement came just two weeks after Donald Trump recaptured the White House, an election victory that Anduril Co-Founder Palmer Luckey said will be good for his business.
The new agreement is for a counter-drone system that will intercept and seek to destroy incoming drones and other aircraft as part of a comprehensive Marine upgrade.
“This contract represents a significant milestone in Anduril’s partnership with the U.S. Marine Corps,” Chris Brose, chief strategy officer at Anduril, said in a Nov. 19 statement.
The agreement provides for “indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity’’ of the drone system material that will be purchased within the five-year time frame as needed by the Marine Corps.
Barracuda-M Cruise Missiles
Anduril, the nation’s hottest defense tech startup, has recently introduced several new products, including a fleet of Barracuda-M cruise missiles and a way to use its military surveillance systems in space, “the final frontier.”
Luckey also revealed his “top priority” is goggles for front-line soldiers.
Anduril has moved well beyond its earlier focus on protecting borders to becoming a full-fledged defense supplier including a variety of airborne and underwater drones, autonomous fighter jets and rocket motors.
The moves are all part of Luckey’s plan to boost U.S. military defenses against adversaries such as China and reduce costs to the U.S. taxpayer.
“I don’t think the United States needs to be the world police. It needs to be the world’s gun store,” Luckey posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Sept. 13.
Anduril said in October it had been awarded a $250 million Pentagon contract to supply Roadrunner interceptor drones and Pulsar electronic warfare systems.
The Costa Mesa-based company is positioning itself to take on major defense contractors such as RTX (NYSE: RTX; formerly called Raytheon Technologies) and Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT).
In August, Anduril raised $1.5 billion and was valued at $14 billion. There’s been speculation that the company will one day go for a public listing.
High-Tech Anvil Drones
Anduril’s new anti-drone system for the Marines will include Anvil, an autonomous interceptor specifically designed to defeat small Group 1 and Group 2 drone threats. Anvil uses advanced onboard computing and sensors to carry out the mission.
The system will be powered by Lattice, Anduril’s advanced, open command-and-control operating system.
Anduril said its drone system will enable the Marines to “defeat the full spectrum of air threats.
Anduril has a proven track record of delivering drone capabilities to the Marine Corps.
The company has already deployed fixed-site Sentry Towers at Marine Corps installations across the U.S., providing autonomous solutions for detecting, tracking, identifying and defeating Groups 1 and 2 drone threats.
Pentagon’s Slow Contract Moves
Luckey has continuously said he wants to streamline the Pentagon’s lumbering contract process, a view that aligns him completely with the incoming president.
However, experts have warned that will prove difficult, as previous administrations have also discovered, given federal procurement laws and the military’s slow-moving contracts process.
“It’s not like the defense secretary can say, ‘eliminate all bureaucracy and issue a contract in 30 days,’ and everyone says ‘absolutely we’ll get everything done in 30 days,’” Scott Sacknoff, president of aerospace and defense investment firm Spade Indexes LLC, told Business Insider this month.
Anduril is also facing competition from a growing number of military-oriented drone makers.
Modernizing U.S. Space Surveillance
Anduril said Nov. 21 it has been awarded a contract worth up to $99.7 million to modernize the U.S. Space Surveillance Network with the company’s signature Lattice software platform.
The U.S. Space Systems Command awarded the five-year “program of record” contract, for a network replacing “legacy communications systems,” according to the Costa Mesa-based firm.
Anduril said it is ready to meet the Space Command’s requirement for full deployment by the end of 2026.
“Lattice is replacing outdated systems with a robust, modern architecture designed to not only meet current needs but to evolve as new threats emerge,” Anduril said in a statement.
The company added: “At Anduril, we know that no solution works in isolation. Our system is built for interoperability, integrating with other critical U.S. Space Force (USSF) systems.”
The Space Surveillance Network, a global web of ground-based sensors tracking key space assets and debris, needs modernization now more than ever, according to Anduril.
Luckey’s Anduril Set to Thrive Under Trump
Palmer Luckey, a fervent supporter of President-elect Donald Trump, sees even better days ahead with the new presidential administration.
In a post-election interview with Bloomberg TV, Luckey said it is “great to have someone inbound who is deeply aligned with the idea that we need to be spending less on defense while still getting more: that we need to do a better job of procuring the defense tools that protect our country.”
“Anduril’s been around for about eight years now,” Luckey said. “We did well under Trump in his first administration, and we did even better under Biden in his administration, and I think we’re going to do even better now.”
Luckey also cited what he called the “pretty non-partisan” role of the defense industry.
The president-elect and his team consulted with Anduril co-founder Trae Stephens, underscoring the incoming administration’s plans to shake up the U.S. military, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
Anduril’s leaders aren’t all pro-Trump. CEO and co-founder Brian Schimpf donated $510,000 to Democrat Kamala Harris’ failed presidential campaign, according to the Los Angeles Times. That put him at No. 96 on the newspaper’s list of 100 California residents giving the most to the campaigns for the White House.
