![\"Surface-Launched](\"https:\/\/theaviationist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/barracuda-500m-460x259.jpg\")
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Anduril announced on May 13, 2026, that it signed a framework agreement<\/a> with the U.S. Department of War to deliver a minimum of 3,000 Surface-Launched Barracuda-500M (SLB-500M) autonomous air vehicles to the U.S. Army. Meeting the DoW\u2019s current need for affordable, simple, mass-producible, and modular weapons, the SLB-500M is a \u201ccruise missile solution to the long-range precision fires and stand-off strike problem,\u201d for the Army\u2019s Program Acquisition Executive FIRES (PAE FIRES), says the company.<\/p>\n While the contract value is not known, Anduril said the framework agreement with the Undersecretary of War for Research and Engineering (OSWR&E) involves a minimum of 1,000 all-up round units per year, with the first tranche expected to be delivered by mid-2027. Anduril will also deliver 60 of the SLB-500M\u2019s associated containerized launch systems in 2027.<\/p>\n PAE FIRES is acquiring the missiles for the Army\u2019s Ground-Launched Low-Cost Containerized Munition program. The SLB-500M can also be optionally integrated with Anduril\u2019s in-house flight autonomy software, Lattice<\/a>, for enhanced \u201csurvivability and effectiveness against large target sets in contested environments,\u201d further adds the company.\u00a0<\/p>\n Anduril has signed a production agreement with @DeptofWar<\/a> to rapidly deliver Surface-Launched Barracuda-500M at scale.<\/p>\n Affordable missiles designed for long-range precision strikes.<\/p>\n We will deliver a minimum of 1,000 rounds per year for three years, with the first rounds\u2026 https:\/\/t.co\/j9nlNOE1XR<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/G2Lj6GiemS<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Anduril Industries (@anduriltech) May 13, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Anduril had first unveiled the Barracuda family<\/a> of weapons in September 2024, with the Barracuda-500M being tested a few times since then. The Barracuda-500M is also one of the contenders for the Air Force\u2019s Enterprise Test Vehicle (ETV) program, for which Anduril announced on Mar. 4, 2025<\/a>, its selection by the Air Force\u2019s Armament Directorate and Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) to move to the effort\u2019s next phase.\u00a0<\/p>\n Anduril says the production-friendliness to meet the DoW\u2019s mass-producibility is achieved by manufacturing the Barracuda, and all its other weapons, with commercially, readily available, non-exquisite spares, components, electronics, while the design and materials ensure the weapons are not over-engineered. This enables what the company calls \u201chyper-scale\u201d production at its nearly $1 billion Arsenal-1 factory in Columbus, Ohio, that can \u201cmeet additional surges in demand.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Anduril, the \u201chighly capable and affordable\u201d SLB-500M \u201cenables high-volume, coordinated, long range strikes,\u201d with the 100 pound munition payload and 500+ nautical miles range \u201ceffective against a wide range of land and maritime targets.\u201d<\/p>\n Dzi\u015b oficjalnie. Tak, to tylko porozumienie jakich PGZ podpisa\u0142a ju\u017c dziesi\u0105tki, ale mo\u017ce tym razem przyniesie konkretne rezultaty. \u2014 Tomasz Dmitruk (@goltarr) October 27, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The weapon does not require \u201cadditional infrastructure to support large-scale fielding,\u201d since it can be fired from a \u201cstandard 20-foot ISO container,\u201d that can be loaded with up to 16 all-up round units. An operator can choose Lattice or other existing software, select targets and pick and fire the \u201cright combination\u201d of SLB-500M munitions.<\/p>\n A video released by Anduril also showed the SLB-500M being launched both vertically and diagonally from the ground. The containerized launch shows a Solid Rocket Motor (SRM) booster falling off, with the main air-breathing jet engine taking over and the top-mounted wings later deploying in the cruise phase.<\/p>\n The other two missiles in the Barracuda family are the Barracuda-100 and Barracuda-250, with their respective \u2018M\u2019 variants denoting kinetic effects. A similar approach is also seen with the Copperhead series of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles<\/a>, with the vehicles without the \u2018M\u2019 designation being sensing and\/or ISR platforms.<\/p>\n Anduril describes Barracuda-250 as a low-cost AAV that can be flexibly employed from diverse air, ground, or maritime platforms, including the internal weapons bays of fifth-generation fighter aircraft.<\/p>\n \u201cUnder the agreement, Anduril will scale production to deliver a minimum of 1,000 all-up rounds per year, with the first tranche of\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/V4fNSYiK7c<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Counter Unmanned Systems (@CUAS_NEWS) May 13, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Anduril\u2019s product information page<\/a> lists the Barracuda-500M\u2019s range under 500 nautical miles (926 km), with a speed between 190 and 500 knots (350-926 km\/h). The speed would also depend upon the type and weight of its warhead, and other payload.<\/p>\n Likewise, the smaller Barracuda-100 and the Barracuda-100M have a 120 NM (222 km) range. Platforms that can be expected to operate the Barracuda are the F-35 and frontline bombers<\/a> in their internal weapons bays, or lugged externally by F-15s, F-16s and F\/A-18 Super Hornets.<\/p>\n The weapons can be adopted for palletized launches<\/a> from C-130 and C-17 cargo aircraft, if the Air Force decides to have a larger variety of mass-producible and technically simple cruise missiles to throw mass in a fight, apart from the FAMM\/ERAM<\/a> class of weapons.<\/p>\n In a September 2024 test of the Barracuda-500M overseen by the DIU, the missile was launched vertically from a ground-based cell \u201cto emulate palletized employment from air-lift aircraft.\u201d The missile performed \u201cautonomous navigation and flight for over 30 minutes, successful capture of a GPS coordinate target identified in Lattice, and autonomous terminal guidance to the target.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Barracuda-500, a low cost cruise missile, is the big brother of the Barracuda family.<\/p>\n An air & ground launched cruise missile developed by \u2014 Anduril has long distinguished itself from legacy defense companies by injecting scalability and logistical simplicity in the Barracuda family, the Copperhead maritime weapons<\/a> and the YFQ-44A Fury<\/a> Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA). It achieves this by selecting readily available, proven components, electronics, assemblies, simple designs and reconfigurable factory and assembly lines with the requisite machinery to dynamically respond to production needs.\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The Barracuda also represents the trend of blurring difference<\/a> between long-range One-Way Attack (OWA) drones and cruise missiles<\/a> for standoff strikes, meant to be thrown at enemy targets while being simultaneously mass-produced. Anduril has also described the Barracudas as a family of air-breathing cruise missiles, which are modular open-systems architecture (MOSA)-enabled and software defined for rapid upgrades.<\/p>\n @anduriltech<\/a> Unveils Barracuda-M Family of Cruise Missiles<\/p>\n The Barracuda family of AAVs consists of Barracuda-100, Barracuda-250, and Barracuda-500. Each increment offers increasing size, range and payload capacity, but all Barracudas are compatible with a host of payloads and\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/NW1RvpUI6W<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Global Defense Insight (@Defense_Talks) September 12, 2024<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n In the latest press release, Anduril said that \u201cexisting solutions are too expensive, too exquisite, and too hard to produce at scale.\u201d The Barracuda weapons are also supported by simple tooling and manufacturing machinery.<\/p>\n When it first unveiled the weapons in September 2024<\/a>, Anduril said that \u201cthe Barracuda family of AAVs only requires ten or less tools to assemble. Barracuda can be produced by the broad commercial automotive and consumer electronics workforce, rather than [\u2026] the much smaller, over-stretched, highly-specialized, defense-specific manufacturing labor pool.\u201d<\/p>\n In its latest release, Anduril said that the entire Barracuda family, including the SLB-500, have 70% of their components openly available, while \u201cthe remaining 30% are de-risked by competing open-architecture designs among multiple vendors.\u201d This makes the SLB-500M resistant to supply chain disruptions<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Anduril will provide the U.S. Army with a minimum of 3,000 Surface-Launched Barracuda-500M, starting in 2027 with the first 1,000 along with the associated containerized launch systems. Anduril announced on May 13, 2026, that it signed a framework agreement with the U.S. Department of War to deliver a minimum of 3,000 Surface-Launched Barracuda-500M (SLB-500M) autonomous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2211,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zephyrsys.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zephyrsys.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zephyrsys.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zephyrsys.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zephyrsys.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zephyrsys.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zephyrsys.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zephyrsys.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zephyrsys.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zephyrsys.us\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
SLB-500M<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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\n![\"\u25b6\"](\"https:\/\/s.w.org\/images\/core\/emoji\/17.0.2\/72x72\/25b6.png\")
https:\/\/t.co\/sPTsvOOKGa<\/a>@PGZ_pl<\/a> i ![\"\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8\"](\"https:\/\/s.w.org\/images\/core\/emoji\/17.0.2\/72x72\/1f1fa-1f1f8.png\")
firma @anduriltech<\/a> podpisa\u0142y porozumienie o wsp\u00f3\u0142pracy w zakresie wsp\u00f3lnego opracowywania i produkcji\u2026 pic.twitter.com\/Yin1A0qqKY<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/theaviationist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/barracuda-500m-2-706x397.jpg\")
<\/a>Barracuda family of scalable cruise missiles and AAVs<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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Anduril (@anduriltech<\/a>) announced a production agreement for Surface-Launched Barracuda-500M with U.S. Department of War (@DeptofWar<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n
#US<\/a> manufacturer Anduril Costing <$200,000 with a range of up to 925km, a speed of Mach 0.75, and a 45kg warhead![\"\u2b07\"](\"https:\/\/s.w.org\/images\/core\/emoji\/17.0.2\/72x72\/2b07.png\")
https:\/\/t.co\/NVnh25S1CE<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/clg6aiNdx1<\/a><\/p>\n Midobecker (@midobecker_1) October 13, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nScalability<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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