WASHINGTON — Defense contractors Anduril and RTX both unveiled ground-launched versions of existing munitions at the AFA conference outside Washington last week, pointing to growing market demand for the weapons amid trials on the modern battlefield.
Some of that demand is coming from the US government. Just one day after the conference ended, the Republican majority for the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday praised Anduril’s offering in particular, pledging that a dedicated military program would procure the new capability.
“There is currently no program for these types of missiles, but there will be soon,” the Republican SASC account posted on X, adding that $25 million set aside in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill will “accelerate development” of the class of weapons.
Anduril announced at the AFA conference that it is updating the company’s Barracuda-500 cruise missile to launch from the ground. When the Barracuda-500’s air-launched version was announced last year, the company said the weapon could offer a range over 500 nautical miles and carry more than 100 pounds of payload.
“Over the past several months, it’s been very clear that the priority” for Pentagon and congressional leadership “is fixing our munitions gap,” Diem Salmon, Anduril’s vice president for Air Dominance and Strike, said in a briefing with reporters Tuesday. “I think this has picked up actually in terms of prioritization and focus recently, and the desire is to finally fix what has been a problem in our missile inventory that’s decades old at this point.”
RTX subsidiary Raytheon also adapted one of its own existing munitions for a surface-launched role and unveiled it at AFA: the GBU-53/B StormBreaker, also known as the 250-pound class Small Diameter Bomb II, that can be launched from Air Force and Navy aircraft.
“Recent global conflicts have highlighted the need for a smart, ground-launched, precision strike weapon that can perform in GPS-contested areas,” Sam Deneke, Raytheon’s president of Air & Space Defense Systems, said in a company press release published on Wednesday. “StormBreaker is a composable weapon, which allows it to be customized to meet mission demands. Using the foundational components of air-launched StormBreaker allowed us to move faster than ever before, going from concept to test flight in under two months.”
The Pentagon and foreign customers have shown keen interest in the StormBreaker. For example, an Air Force notice published last year that outlined a plan for the next dozen production lots set an annual manufacturing rate target of up to 2,240 units.
The war in Ukraine in particular has highlighted the need for various munitions, and modes of launching them, that can strike long-distance targets. Ukrainian defense firm Fire Point, for example, recently unveiled a ground-launched cruise missile called Flamingo that can carry a roughly 2,500-pound warhead and travel over 1,800 miles.
Steve Milano, Anduril’s senior director for advanced effects, said alongside Salmon in the Tuesday briefing that the company is poised to manufacture thousands of Barracuda-500s as early as next year, cautioning that “demand needs to solidify for us to make the investments that are necessary.”
A key opportunity, according to Milano, is the Air Force’s new Family of Affordable Mass Missiles program, which fiscal 2026 budget documents showed a desire to buy approximately 3,000 units using One Big Beautiful Bill funds, otherwise known as reconciliation. Beyond the Pentagon, Milano said that there’s “a lot” of demand from international customers, leading to co-development agreements like one underway with Taiwan.
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