Anduril Unveils Bolt & Bolt-M

Today, Anduril is unveiling the Bolt family of man-packable, vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) Autonomous Air Vehicles (AAVs) that delivers simple and flexible capability for a variety of missions. Bolt, the base configuration, is designed for man-packable ISR and search and rescue. Bolt-M, the munition variant of Bolt, is designed to arm any ground force with lethal precision firepower, leveraging onboard software to automate the flight behaviors required to accurately track and strike a target, while providing human operators with four simple decisions: where to look, what to follow, how to engage, and when to strike.

Modern conflicts have demonstrated how lightweight, man-portable tactical loitering munitions can provide asymmetric advantage to dismounted forces by leveraging readily-available commercial drone technology to reduce costs and increase production capacity. While effective, first-person view (FPV) drones require highly-skilled pilots to successfully find and strike targets, placing a significant cognitive burden on operators and creating a need for highly-specialized training. Modern ground forces need large numbers of low-cost, lightweight, man portable, and reliable loitering munitions that are capable of delivering outsized performance without requiring specialized operators.

That is precisely what Bolt-M delivers. Designed for ease of operation and rapid deployment in a man-portable package, Bolt-M offers autonomous waypoint navigation and target-agnostic object tracking, customizable standoff distances and engagement modalities, and more than 40 minutes of endurance and 20 kilometers of range to extend the reach of dismounted forces. And, with up to three pounds of munition payload capacity, Bolt-M delivers devastating effects against static or moving ground-based targets, including light vehicles, dismounted personnel, trenches, and more.