Anduril sees an opportunity to alleviate the rocket motor shortage.
Amid a shortage of rocket motors for munitions, Anduril Industries, a venture capital-backed startup, has acquired Adranos, a manufacturer of solid rocket motors.
The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Anduril of Costa Mesa, California, said on June 25 that it plans to become a supplier of solid rocket motors to prime contractors manufacturing missiles, including hypersonic missiles, for the U.S. Department of Defense.
Shipments of arms to Ukraine, in support of Kyiv’s efforts to fend off the Russian invasion, has depleted the U.S. inventory. The Pentagon is working to boost munitions production, but weapons manufacturers such as Lockheed Martin, maker of the U.S. Army’s Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS), have said that production capacity is limited by a lack of motors. Northrop Grumman and Aerojet Rocketdyne supply rocket motors for GMLRS.
Adranos of McHenry, Mississippi, founded in 2015, produces an aluminum-lithium alloy fuel called Alitec. The company claims the fuel can increase the range of solid rocket motors by up to 40%. The startup says its rocket motors could be used for tactical missiles, rocket-assisted projectiles, hypersonic missiles, missile defense and space launch.
Anduril plans to invest additional “resources” in the Adranos solid rocket production facility in Mississippi to increase the output of standard and Alitec solid rocket motors to thousands of units per year, it says.
“There is a clear need for greater competition and expanded supply in solid rocket motors for the United States and our allies,” Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf says.
Anduril has raised about $2.2 billion, according to Crunchbase. The company was founded in 2017 by Palmer Luckey, founder and creator of the Oculus VR virtual reality headset startup that was sold to Facebook. It initially focused on small reconnaissance drones, security cameras and autonomous systems, but has expanded into other areas such as autonomous underwater vehicles and battlefield management software.
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