Anduril Industries on Sunday said it has acquired Adranos Inc. in a deal that puts Anduril in the solid rocket motor business and gives Adranos the backing to further advance its technology and expand the business.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Anduril is considered a disruptor in the defense industry, in part by leveraging its own resources to beat out traditional suppliers at lower cost, innovative products and greater efficiency. The company said the acquisition makes it a merchant supplier of solid rocket motors to prime contractors for their missiles, hypersonic and other propulsion systems.
The ongoing war in Ukraine and related demand for weapons that rely on solid rocket motors is straining the defense industrial base, which is one reason a new entrant is needed, Christian Brose, Anduril’s chief strategy officer, told Defense Daily
on Monday during a virtual interview. In addition, there hasn’t been much innovation by the current suppliers of solid rocket motors and the Ukrainian War is demonstrating the need for “innovative approaches to solid rocket motor design, development, production, and manufacturing,” all of which Adranos is already on the path to achieving, he said.
Anduril is “supercharging” Adranos’ efforts, Brose said.
The primary suppliers of solid rocket motors in the U.S. are Aerojet Rocketdyne [AJRD] and Northrop Grumman [NOC], via its acquisition of Orbital ATK in 2018. Both companies produce motors for missiles and launch vehicles. The federal government is reviewing the potential purchase of Aerojet by L3Harris Technologies [LHX].
“We need better motors, we need more motors, and we need them all in much larger quantities than we’re looking at now, Brose said. “So our belief is that the U.S. industrial base is not going to get where it needs to be on weapons production on the back of two companies.”
Adranos manufactures aluminized solid rocket motors and has also developed a proprietary aluminum-lithium alloy fuel called ALITEC that it says can increase range by up to 40 percent and save costs. Adranos has also developed a manufacturing process for its motors to build them faster and more efficiently than competitors.
Adranos has its corporate headquarters and fuel manufacturing facility in West Lafayette, Ind., a solid rocket motor research and development, testing and production facility in McHenry, Miss., and an engineering, modeling and simulation office in Huntsville, Ala.
Brose said the production facilities in Mississippi “are just really well, well positioned for large scale production on a pretty quick timetable.”
Adranos has the relationships and “rapport” with Defense Department and weapons contractors, Brose said. The company’s products are not currently installed in large quantities on any weapons but they are “poised” and “positioned” to “succeed at scale on the timelines we need,” he said, which he added is in the “very near future.”
Palmer Luckey, Anduril’s founder, tweeted on Sunday about his company’s expectations now that it is in the solid rocket motor business.
“Anduril intends to be the world leader in rocket motor technology and production,” Luckey tweeted. “Reliable, affordable, durable, and extraordinarily performant rocket motors that will power weapons from Javelin/Stinger class up to cis-lunar space fleet defense.”
Javelin and Stinger are both shoulder-fired weapons, the former for killing tanks and the latter for shooting down aircraft. The U.S. has been supplying both systems to Ukraine in their war against Russia.
Brose said that Anduril is eyeing “specific programs” that need scaling and more solid rocket motors.
Anduril is known for its Lattice open systems operating software platform, small unmanned aircraft systems, autonomous surveillance towers, counter UAS capabilities, and unmanned underwater vehicle, all enabled by the company’s expertise in artificial intelligence.
Now, it is about helping Adranos get quickly up to speed.
“Our focus has been on innovating solid rocket motor development and manufacturing, solving the problems of rocket range and production volumes,” Chris Stoker, CEO of Adranos, said in a statement. “With Anduril, we’ll be able to rapidly mature our technology and scale our team and production capabilities to increase our output to thousands of traditional and ALITEC solid rocket motors per year.”
Brian Schimpf, Anduril’s CEO, said in a statement. “With this acquisition, Anduril will grow the defense industrial base, speed development and production of critical components with an advanced manufacturing approach, and enable next-generation performance of solid rocket motors with ALITEC, which is crucial for national security and overall health of the defense industry.”