Summary and Key Points: Anduril Industries has unveiled its new Barracuda family of cruise missiles, designed to address the U.S. military’s cruise missile shortage. With three variants—Barracuda-M 100, 250, and 500—the missiles offer advanced capabilities at lower costs, thanks to Anduril’s “hyper-scale production” approach.

-The Barracuda family is expected to provide the U.S. with a high-volume, affordable alternative to existing missiles like the AGM-158, crucial for long-term conflicts.

-Anduril’s scalable production and simplified assembly could revolutionize cruise missile manufacturing, offering a quick-response solution for large-scale conflicts, especially in the Pacific theater against potential adversaries like China.

Last week, California-based Anduril Instrustries unveiled their new Barracuda family of cruise missiles which are meant to address one of America’s most pressing strategic shortcomings: its inability to produce munitions in sufficient numbers to sustain a large-scale conflict in the 21st century.

These new weapons could feasibly be described as one-way drones or air-breathing cruise missiles. They come in three variations depending on the range and payload required for the job, with the largest and most capable iteration meant to serve in a similar role to Lockheed Martin’s AGM-158 family of low-observable cruise missiles – including in cargo aircraft via the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Rapid Dragon palletized launch system.

The real claim to fame for the Barracuda family is Anduril’s ability to mass-produce these missiles for low cost and rapidly expand production to meet the military’s needs using a methodology the company calls “hyper-scale production.”

“A single Barracuda takes 50 percent less time to produce, requires 95 percent fewer tools, and 50 percent fewer parts than competing solutions on the market today,” the company said in press materials. “As a result, the Barracuda family of AAVs is 30 percent cheaper on average than other solutions, enabling affordable mass and cost-effective, large-scale employment.”

According to Anduril’s press release, its “hyper-scale” approach would allow the firm to double production capacity on demand, using a combination of modular systems across different versions of the missiles, automated manufacturing, and simplified assembly that can be completed with just a handful of tools and minimal training.

While the ongoing war in Ukraine has provided........

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