Military-tech upstart Anduril pushes further into NATO with German arms maker deal

Move fast and blow things up

Silicon Valley-backed weapons maker Anduril and German armaments biz Rheinmetall have signed a deal to see US-designed drones and missiles integrated into European military platforms.

Anduril, co-founded by Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey, expanded from Lattice border-surveillance towers into autonomous drones and AI-driven command and control (C2) systems. It has agreed to supply hardware for German arms maker Rheinmetall's Battlesuite digital sovereignty framework, which is meant to coordinate C2 across both manned and unmanned weapons systems.

"This is a different model of defense collaboration, one built on shared production, operational relevance, and mutual respect for sovereignty," said Brian Schimpf, CEO of Anduril Industries, in a canned statement. "Together with Rheinmetall, we’re building systems that can be produced quickly, deployed widely, and adapted as NATO missions evolve."

The deal comes as NATO's European members eye higher defense budgets amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine and President Trump's repeated calls for greater burden-sharing. The German government has signaled a gradual path toward a 5 percent of GDP defense budget, and NATO has urged the UK to boost core defense spending to 3.5 percent of GDP.

US firms aren't necessarily seen as prime partners, however, considering the rocky state of relations with the US and Trump's indecision on whether to continue funding Ukraine's fight against Russia. Rumors of a "kill switch" in US-made F-35 aircraft forced an official denial from the Pentagon that any such thing existed, amid the Portuguese military canceled its planned purchase of 27–28 F-35As in March and opened talks to procure Swedish Gripen E/F fighters.

But what's more important to the Germans is the speed of delivery, as it faces an increasingly bellicose Russia. Anduril is built around the idea of rapid production, which fits that need very well and may have overcome fears of buying American.

Under the partnership, Anduril and Rheinmetall aim to produce modified versions of the Barracuda family of cruise munitions and the Fury Group-5 autonomous combat aircraft tailored to European operational requirements. The deal will see the two companies develop the drones that can be integrated into NATO forces, once they are finished and certified.

The Barracuda family comprises air-breathing, turbojet-powered Autonomous Air Vehicles (AAVs). The Barracuda-500 delivers over 500 nautical miles of range, carries more than 100 lb of payload, and can loiter for more than 120 minutes before engaging its target.

Earlier this year, Anduril released footage of the Barracuda's early flight tests and, while there's a lot of work to do, the design looks solid. Its largest Barracuda 500 missile has been flying since last year and has been selected for development by the US Air Force Armament Directorate.

Fury is a longer term project designed to meet the needs of the US Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) initiative, in which autonomous drone aircraft will accompany human pilots on missions. The Air Force has been developing AI-controlled aircraft using three converted F-16 fighters and in simulations, the computer-controlled aircraft beat human pilots - in part because they were allowed to pull off maneuvers that would have overstressed the airframe.

But the technology is working, so much so that the then-Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall told Congress he'd be happy to fly in one. He eventually did so, albeit with a human pilot in the back seat just in case, and Anduril is one of two companies selected for the CCA project, with the YFQ-44A, a semi-autonomous build of the Fury.

Speaking in an interview with the Royal Aeronautical Society on the expo floor at the Paris Air Show, Jason Levin, SVP of engineering at Anduril, said that Fury is a Level 5 autonomous drone, meaning it can take off, perform its mission, and land again without any human control. He said the airframe was beginning ground testing in May.

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Anduril uses its Lattice networking technology to allow its hardware to interconnect, but the deal with Rheinmetall will see this integrated into the Battlesuite system. The German system, announced earlier this year, is designed to link new and existing weapons into a coordinated whole in a network hardened against online attacks.

The privately held company is backed by an array of investors, including stalwart Silicon Valley VC funds Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund, and has had a number of wins recently, including a deal with Meta - Luckey's former employer (then known as Facebook), which fired him in 2016 - to provide mixed-reality headsets for soldiers.

Anduril and Rheinmetall had no additional comment at the time of going to press. ®