Barracuda: Revolutionizing Defense Manufacturing and Scalability

Barracuda enables the U.S. and allies to efficiently produce advanced munitions to deter expansionist threats.

### Advancements in Defense Technology: The Barracuda System and Global Partnerships
* 🔧 Palmer emphasizes the importance of **simplifying manufacturing processes** by reducing the number of parts and tools needed, aiming to **enhance production speed** for defense systems.
* 🌍 The ultimate goal is to equip the United States and its allies with necessary tools to **deter expansionist threats**, notably from China, as the U.S. faces **critical shortages in munitions** during conflict scenarios.
* 🚀 The newly announced Barracuda system features **half the parts** and uses **95% fewer tools**, allowing for **mass production of thousands of units**, addressing the **urgent needs of the U.S. and its partners**.
* 🤖 The core product, Lattice, has been under development for seven years, enabling **A.I.-powered weapons** that have effectively **targeted and destroyed significant Russian military assets** in Ukraine without relying on **real-time human control**.
* 🤝 While the company is ready to support Ukraine's military ambitions, Palmer clarifies that decisions regarding **sales and deployment of weapons systems** rest with the **U.S. government**, not private companies.
* 🏭 With a recent valuation of **$14 billion**, the company is expanding its manufacturing capabilities, including a **5 million square foot facility** called Arsenal One, designed to produce a wide range of **A.I.-powered autonomous systems**.
* 🇺🇸 Palmer believes that the U.S. should act as a "**world gun store**" rather than the world police, focusing on providing allies with the necessary **tools to defend themselves** instead of deploying American troops.
* 🛡 The company's strong relationship with Taiwan and recent sanctions from China highlight the **geopolitical tensions** and the effectiveness of their **advanced defense systems** in **countering potential threats**.

The philosophy here. Palmer is just making it ever more easy, fewer parts, and making it quicker to make. Well, you know, I think that having fewer parts, easier to make, that's downstream, is the real goal, which is to make sure that the United States, our allies, and our partners around the world have the tools that we need to deter expansionist dictatorships like China right now. In a lot of war games, we are modeling. The United States is running out of critical munitions, particularly missiles, in just a few days of conflict, and for years has been working to build a family of systems that solves this. And we just announced that family of systems today. It's called Barracuda. It's made with half the parts, in half the time, using 95% less tools than a lot of the existing missile systems on the market. It is a mass manufacturable product that is designed to be made at scale, many thousands of systems at a time, because

that's what the United States needs, that's what our allies need. It's what our partners need. Talking of partners and allies drone I over in Ukraine at the moment, you're supplying drones, we understand piloted by A.I., but how much is it? How much is it the human? How much autonomy do they have about targets? Well, in our case, it's all about A.I. Our core product is called Lattice. You know, in all industries has been working on A.I. powered weapons for about seven years now, and the core software is lattice. This brain that powers all of our different systems, including Barracuda, including all of us, including Ghost, which are in Ukraine and have been since the second week of the war. We destroyed hundreds of millions of dollars in critical Russian hardware that can't really be destroyed by things that require a real-time link to a person because the Russians are quite

good at jamming communications links when it comes to things that are important to them. They don't have enough of these jammers to hit the entire battlefield. But that's why it's so important that we keep taking those things out and eventually hopefully leave them helpful. Help us to these types of systems. Palmer It's great to have you back on Bloomberg Technology You know, in the context of Ukraine, I'm kind of thinking about the existing work and then what what we're hearing from Ukraine at the moment, which is they kind of want to push deeper or strike deeper into Russia. Does does Andrew have any technology where you would work with Ukraine on that goal or be a part of that process? Absolutely. With the caveat that these decisions are not up to us. It's up to the United States government. They decide on who we sell to, how we sell to them, and to a large extent, what they do with these weapons systems. And I don't think that Andrew or any

private defense company, any private company, period, should be in a position where we're de facto controlling the United States foreign policy position by saying, Oh, we would help with this, we would help with that. I think that we need to put that decision with the people who are supposed to be making that decision, which are people who are accountable to the electorate. In other words, you should not trust me. You should not have to trust me. You should trust somebody that you can vote for and then vote accordingly. We're showing images of the Barracuda system. And at the top of the program, you talked about allies. And so when I think about scalability, is that because you want to be in service of any specific allies beyond the US government, what is the sort of benefit of the scalability of the design? Well, this gets into a little bit the philosophy of it, but I'll tell you how I think about things.

I don't think the United States needs to be the world police. I think we need to be the world gun store. We need to be able to provide our allies and our partners around the world with the tools that they need to turn themselves into prickly porcupines that nobody wants to step on. And I think that sending American lives overseas, boots on the ground, is not going to be the future of how we support our friends around the world. I think it's going to be making sure that we can make things at a scale where they believe that our support for them is more than just words. We can actually send them the things that we say that we're willing to send. And I think Ukraine has really exposed this weakness in the United States foreign policy strategy, where we say we support all of these people, but they look to say, well, they can't even manufacture the basics like artillery shells or, you know, small missiles.

How can I possibly count on these people to be able to cash these checks that they're writing? And I think that Barracuda is a response to that. Largely, it's something that was designed from the beginning for low cost, high rate manufacturability. And it's a flying operational system right now with multiple customers. I think the partners are going to be able to trust that Barracuda is something that we can actually make for them and deliver to them when they need it, not just now, but also if a conflict were to erupt and you're delivering by manufacturing evermore in the United States and with money to your cash and checks. You just recently got a whopping valuation of $14 billion by raising more money to build in the US, the Arsenal one and other manufacturing units. Can you update us as to where they might be these sprawling manufacturing areas? We did. We just closed a huge round with our investors.

It was all of our previous investors coming in and a whole bunch of new strategic investors who want to help us build a lot of things, but a particularly arsenal one, which is a 5 million square foot factory that we're building that is going to create thousands of jobs and build vast numbers of AI-powered autonomous weapons systems. And it's not just Barracuda; it's actually the entire product suite of things that Android makes. It's all of our missiles; it's all of our drones; it's our submarines. It's a reconfigurable factory line that is able to share a lot of the equipment and tooling between these programs, which gets the costs down and it gets the rates up, and the benefits flow on to our customers. Palmer is the real selling air defense systems to Israel. Well, look, I think I can't comment on any specific deployments, especially about something as sensitive as that. But I'll tell you this.

I have no problem with Israel. I have no problem selling things like that to Israel. But a better, better target for your question would be the United States government. And I have to ask you. You mentioned China at the top of the conversation has an overall commercial relationship with Taiwan. Oh, we have a very strong relationship with Taiwan. I've been there many times. In fact, I'm going there again soon. And I think that that strong relationship is actually one of the reasons that Andro was recently sanctioned by the Chinese Communist Party. They announced that we are that they're going to seize all our Chinese assets and we're prohibited from entering the country. Joke's on them. We don't have any Chinese assets. But it was in the wake of a recent deal that we did with Taiwan, getting them some systems that I think China, frankly, is is really afraid of. They know that our systems are the real

deal, and they know they can't jam them. They know they can't hack them. And that's because they're powered by.

Anduril's Barracuda System Scales Missile Defense

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Bloomberg Technology

Streamlining Defense Systems: The Barracuda Initiative

Palmer's philosophy focuses on reducing parts and production time to provide the U.

and its allies with critical munitions to deter expansionist dictatorships.

The newly announced Barracuda system aims to mass-manufacture missile systems at scale, using half the parts and 95% less tools than existing models.

-powered product, Lattice, drives various systems, including those in Ukraine, to disrupt Russian operations and potentially support deeper strikes into Russia, with the U.

government ultimately deciding on the deployment of these weapons.

Private defense companies should not control U.

foreign policy; that responsibility should lie with elected officials.

The company's scalability aims to provide allies and partners with the tools they need for self-defense, rather than relying on U.

foreign policy strategy has been exposed as weak, with a failure to manufacture essential military supplies for allies in need.

Barracuda's Impact on Defense Manufacturing

Barracuda is designed for low cost and high manufacturability, aiming to build trust with partners through reliable delivery.

The company recently raised $14 billion to expand its US manufacturing, with a 5 million square foot factory planned to create thousands of jobs and produce AI-powered autonomous weapons systems.

The factory will have a reconfigurable design, sharing equipment and tooling between programs to reduce costs and increase production rates.

The speaker has no issue with Israel and emphasizes a stronger focus on the U.

They have a strong relationship with Taiwan, having visited multiple times, and are going there again soon.

The recent deal with Taiwan and the systems provided to them triggered sanctions from the Chinese Communist Party, but the speaker claims to have no Chinese assets to seize.