Roadrunner

U.S. defense technology company Anduril Industries has revealed large-scale production of its new Roadrunner loitering interceptor, a reusable drone designed to counter aerial threats with rapid-launch capabilities. The company shared an image across its social media platforms showing a substantial number of serially produced Roadrunner units, signaling that the system is moving beyond development into full-scale manufacturing. According to the company, Roadrunner is a “reusable, vertical take-off and landing (VTOL), operator-supervised Autonomous Air Vehicle (AAV)” equipped with twin turbojet engines and modular payload options. These engines enable the aircraft to launch vertically without a booster and reach high subsonic speeds in flight. The interceptor’s key feature lies in its partial reusability. While the Roadrunner-M variant carries a high-explosive fragmentation warhead to destroy airborne targets, the system can be safely recovered if it misses its mark. In such cases, the drone performs a controlled vertical landing powered by its own propulsion — a method compared to the Falcon 9 rockets from SpaceX. Anduril pic Roadrunner-M is a high-explosive interceptor variant of Roadrunner built for ground-based air defense. It can rapidly launch, identify, intercept, and destroy a wide variety of aerial threats — or be safely recovered and relaunched at near-zero cost. This combination of high-speed interception and reusability sets the Roadrunner apart from most conventional loitering munitions, which are typically single-use systems. Its modular design also allows for various mission configurations beyond kinetic interception.

Roadrunner

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