WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a significant shift from traditional military procurement, the U.S. Department of War (DoW) announced a sweeping framework agreement with defense tech contractor Anduril Industries to rapidly mass-produce the Surface-Launched Barracuda-500M (SLB-500M), a low-cost, long-range cruise missile system.
The multi-year deal, brokered through the Office of the Undersecretary of War for Research and Engineering (OSW(R&E)), establishes the Ground-Launched Low-Cost Containerized Munition program. The contract mandates the delivery of a minimum of 3,000 all-up SLB-500M missile systems to the Army’s Program Acquisition Executive FIRES (PAE FIRES) over the next three years, with provisions to surge production numbers as requirements evolve.
Under the agreement, Anduril will scale output to deliver at least 1,000 missiles annually. The initial tranche of deliveries—along with more than 60 specialized containerized launch systems—is slated for the first half of 2027, just one year after the contract’s signing.
Upending Traditional Munitions Procurement
Pentagon and industry officials view the framework as a direct rejection of legacy defense acquisition strategies, which typically limit critical munition buys to the low hundreds per year due to exorbitant costs and complex supply chains.
“Long-range precision fires and stand-off strike weapons are fundamental to America’s ability to deter our adversaries,” author Pat Morris noted in the announcement, “but existing solutions are too expensive, too exquisite, and too hard to produce at scale.”
By utilizing a non-traditional defense contractor, the Department of War aims to rapidly fortify depleted U.S. munitions inventories.
High-Volume, Autonomous Strike Capabilities
The SLB-500M is engineered to deliver high-volume, coordinated strikes against a diverse array of land and maritime targets. Key specifications include:
- Range: 500+ nautical miles of stand-off strike capability.
- Payload: Equipped with a 100-pound munition warhead.
- Autonomy: Optional integration with Anduril’s Lattice for Mission Autonomy software, enabling swarm synchronization and collaborative, autonomous behaviors in heavily contested airspace.
To minimize logistics overhead, the missiles are housed in a standard 20-foot ISO containerized launcher. The mobile units can be pre-loaded with up to 16 missiles at a munitions depot, transported via standard logistics networks, and emplaced anywhere. Operators can remotely orchestrate strikes via Lattice or existing fire control software. The missiles can also be deployed independently of the container to suit dynamic battlefield scenarios.
Built for “Hyper-Scale” Mass Production
Anduril designed the Barracuda family of systems from the ground up to bypass traditional aerospace supply bottlenecks. The SLB-500M is composed of 70% commercial commodity components. The remaining 30% utilizes an open-architecture design split among multiple vendors, heavily insulating the platform against single-source supply chain disruptions.
Remarkably, an SLB-500M can be fully assembled in just 30 hours using only ten common hand tools.
To support the rapid manufacturing timeline, Anduril has aggressive infrastructure expansions underway:
- Short-Term Production: Anduril recently opened a dedicated 115,000-square-foot facility in Southern California following a $40 million private investment.
- The Ohio Pipeline: Long-term manufacturing will ultimately transition to Arsenal-1, Anduril’s upcoming $1 billion, 5-million-square-foot hyper-scale production facility located in Columbus, Ohio, to accommodate massive surges in domestic and allied demand.
- Rocket Motor Infrastructure: Addressing the critical national shortage of solid rocket motors (SRMs), Anduril has deployed $75 million in private capital alongside $58 million in federal Defense Production Act (DPA) Title III funding to expand its full-rate SRM facility in Mississippi. The expansion formally establishes Anduril as the third major domestic supplier of solid rocket motors in the United States.
With these supply chains and facilities firing in tandem, Anduril project teams indicate they are on track to ramp total capacity to high single-digit thousands of Barracuda airframes by the end of this year.
