Anduril’s Roadrunner is a unique reusable missile interceptor

In October 2024, the Pentagon awarded Anduril a $250 million contract for 500 of the company’s recoverable Roadrunner interceptors, among other items.

These vertical take-off and landing UAVs are powered by air-breathing turbojet engines like many tactical aircraft or cruise missiles. While that’s somewhat unusual for AI-enabled drones, what makes the Roadrunner-M (the armed variant) really special is its ability to turn back and land to be re-used in the event its intended target has already been destroyed or proves not to be hostile. 

Most modern air defense systems use interceptors to bring down airborne targets. These are specialized (and expensive) single-use surface-to-air missiles that are launched via single-use rocket motor and then detonated in close proximity to their targets in order to bring them down. This approach to air defense is effective, but it also has some pretty glaring limitations. Once an interceptor goes up, there’s no calling it back, if it misses its target. There are no second chances, and if you waste your interceptors on false alarms or decoys, you’ll be left defenseless when the real missiles or drones do start pouring in. 

However, Roadrunner doesn’t work like traditional missile interceptors.

To some extent, Roadrunner instead works more like an intercept fighter that can turn kamikaze if the situation calls for it. When a potential threat is identified, armed Roadrunner-M interceptors can immediately take off vertically, closing with the inbound threat at high subsonic speeds and relaying sensor data back to ground control elements to enable decision-making.

If the target is indeed a threat, one of the Roadrunner-M interceptors closes with it and detonates it blast-fragmentation payload, bringing down the target. If there are no other threats to intercept, the other Roadrunners in the air can simply return to their launch point and land vertically again to be refueled for the next intercept. 

Anduril claims that these Roadrunner interceptors offer “three times the warhead payload capacity, ten times the one way effective range, and is three times more maneuverable in G force, compared to similar offerings on the market.”

However, just how much range these interceptors actually offer remains classified. The company also claims that multiple Roadrunner drones and interceptors can be run by a single operator and that they’re designed to be fully integrated into all existing air defense sensors and platforms already in service. 

Because of the advanced capabilities and re-usability offered by Roadrunner, Anduril has acknowledged that they ring in at a higher (though undisclosed) price point than most traditional interceptors. On the other hand, because these weapons can network with one another to distribute targets, fewer interceptors need to be used to bring each target down. 

As Anduril points out, this also allows for an abundance of caution, with the ability to rapidly launch a massive intercept force at the onset of an emerging threat with the confidence that you can recall and re-use all of those interceptors if the threat doesn’t ultimately manifest. 

Sandboxx News spoke to Anduril about Roadrunner last year, but the company was rather tightlipped about the program and its new Pentagon contract.

The company didn’t reveal which branch would receive the reported 500 Roadrunners stipulated by the contract, but it did hint at the idea that these systems may already be deployed in some very specific and limited circumstances.

To that point, Anduril secured a $1 billion counter-drone system contract with U.S. Special Operations Command in 2022, as well as an additional $12.5 million allocated specifically to the Roadrunner program later on in that same year. So it stands to some reason that these Roadrunner interceptors may already be seeing use by America’s most elite and secretive deployed warfighters in high-threat environments. 

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