As Anduril expands, Epirus' weapon passes a big test: Weapons and Warfare

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Weapons and Warfare for Straight Arrow News

I'm your host, Ryan Robertson. Just ahead on this episode of the show, Anduril turns its attention to the open waters of

the world as the company continues to expand its array of offerings, this time with an

eye on what's happening below the surface. And gameplay with serious implications

We visit with the lead war gamer at the Center for Naval yses to see how rolling the dice and dealing with the results is helping shape American military minds and how our next conflict could be fought

But first, some headlines you may have missed. 15 years after leaving the service, Medal of Honor recipient Sergeant Dakota Meyer

is wearing the Marine Corps uniform once again. In a ceremony at the Pentagon, the 36-year-old re-entered the service

with the same rank he held on active duty and will serve as an infantryman in the reserves

When asked about his reasons for re-enlisting, Mayer said he was driven by a deep sense of responsibility

to his fellow Marines and to himself. The mission has always stayed the exact same. It's to lead and to live with integrity and to be unconditional in everything that you stand for. And now I get to step back in this uniform and it's not to start over. It's to renew my commitment to not only to the United States Marine Corps, but to the Constitution, as you just seen, and to the United States of America

Mayer received the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions during a deadly 2009 battle in Afghanistan's Kunar province

Some big developments for Epirus, makers of high-energy, high-power microwave weapon systems, aka counter-drone defenses

Meet Leonidas H2O, a high-energy microwave system capable of simultaneously targeting boat motors

unmanned surface vessels, and drones with a single microwave pulse. During tests conducted by the U.S. Navy, the system effectively disabled several motors at significant distances

showcasing its operational potential. In March, we talked with EPIRIS rep Andrew Wargovchik about those open-water tests

We've recently demonstrated our HPM effectiveness against unmanned surface vehicles, vessels rather, so think drone boats

Swarms of drone boats coming out of destroyer. You have some Epirus HPM systems position, you can take out those swarms of boats

It's been a good winter for the California-based company. In March, it announced $250 million in Series D funding, bringing the company's total venture funding to more than $550 million

dollars, allowing Epirus to scale production of its Leonidas product line. For the first time ever, a female Ranger not only took part in the Army's annual Best Ranger

competition, she and her teammate finished 14th out of an initial field of 52. First Lieutenant

Gabrielle White and her teammate, Captain Seth Del Tenry, tackled the intense three-day event

earning 14th place among the 16 teams that made it to the final round

They were part of a larger group of 52 teams, all competing for the title of the best in the elite Ranger force

Lieutenant White is a 25-year-old infantry officer who graduated from West Point in 2021

and completed Ranger School in April 2022. To participate, soldiers must be Army Rangers and face off in more than 30 events, covering more than 60 miles in just three days

The challenges include helicopter missions, weapons qualification, and obstacle courses. So we can have this debate going at weapons and warfare

When does a startup stop being a startup and become something all its own, something new, something with which to be reckoned

Wherever that imaginary line exists, it seems Anderil Industries crossed it. No longer the new toy in Palmer Luckey's portfolio of ventures, Anderil is a serious player in the DoD's efforts to modernize its forces while preparing for America's next conflict

from Anduril's air systems like Bolt, Barracuda, and Roadrunner, to the Fury, the company's entry

in the race to build the Air Force collaborative combat aircraft Anduril clearly has sights on the skies So it really should be no surprise the company is amping up its underwater efforts as well And that the subject of this week debrief

With a marketing look as distinctive as the approach to developing new hardware for the

Department of Defense, Anderl's launch of its underwater systems, the Copperhead and Seabed

Century, marks its latest salvo in the race to build affordable, sustainable options for the DOD

The whole intent here is to create a new type of subsea effector to deal with the proliferation of

enemy UUVs, particularly the PRC, also Russia, and getting very good at this. So why spend a very

expensive weapon like a Mark 48 on a UUV that's perhaps like a fifth of the cost. So we created

this particular system, which is a fraction of those to address the new targets that are

proliferating in the maritime space. To do that, Anderil built a couple distinctive variants of

the Copperhead AUV. One of the variants, if you will, of the Copperhead is the Copperhead M

which is the munitions variant. So in effect, that is a torpedo. So the two different sizes

the Copperhead 100 is a 100-pound payload, the Copperhead 500, 500-pound payload. And that

basically kind of tracks generally with the Mark 54 torpedo, which roughly has a 100-pound warhead

and the Mark 48, which roughly has a 500- to 600-pound warhead

Not content delivering payloads, Anderil is also developing an AI-powered sensor called

Seabed Sentry that connects users to the ocean's depths. By placing these sensors in large enough

numbers, Anderil can create a wireless network allowing operators to monitor and communicate

underwater in real time, making it possible to constantly watch maritime assets and infrastructure

This particular system is completely cable-less. So it comes out of it, can be delivered

clandestinely by the divex cell which is super important because you don't want your security

cameras in places that the threat knows whereas these cabled systems they're laid by big ships

so you know exactly where the surveillance system is going to be so we're just providing

this different approach given andurl's work with autonomous vehicles you might think its

underwater systems would operate much like the aerial systems but that would be a mistake

According to Shane Arnott, Anderl's Senior Vice President of Programs and Engineering

the sea is pretty unforgiving when it comes to communication. Your GPS denied the whole time, you've got no access to satellites

So it is a real masterclass for autonomy to do that. But absolutely, all of our systems talk with each other

They're all talking the same language using Lattice AI. And that gives us the ability to school or to team all of our different systems together

to achieve kind of combined outcomes, if you will. While visiting with Arnot, we discovered an Anduril partnership

with another startup that we've profiled here on Weapons and Warfare, Charo Marine

The Michigan-based startup that's leading the way in propeller innovation can be found on an array of Anduril's AUVs

So Charo, best in class when it comes to efficiency of props

So yeah, we've been working with them on some other projects that aren't public

and it was an easy read across for them to come onto this particular system in the Copperhead

And they're in an affordable category. Like you look at some of the props that are on the real torpedoes, they're incredibly expensive

The props alone would be the same cost as a full Copperhead. Finally, Anderle's big ambitions require some big real estate

Shortly after announcing the Copperhead and Sea Century platforms, The Orange County Business Journal reported Anderle would be renting some warehouse space a little less than a mile from its headquarters in Costa Mesa, bringing its total footprint in Orange County, California, to about 1.1 million square feet

The lease marks yet another step in Anderle's meteoric growth since opening shop in a small building near John Wayne Airport back in 2017

Serving you clarity through context, our mission at SAN is to deliver the news straight down the middle

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and get straight facts anytime at san.com. For much of what's on display at defense exhibitions, it's a lot like a museum

You can look, you just can't touch. Which is what makes our Weapon of the Week so interesting

So they sent a bomber sortie in to strike the Russian airfield that was there

Nestled in the far corner of the convention center at this year's Navy League Sea Airspace

exhibition was a display that invited passers-by to not only stop and ask questions, but to literally

roll the dice. Jeremy Sapinski is the lead wargamer at the Center for Naval yses

more commonly known as CNA. He's in charge of organizing and developing the skills of their

wargame design team, a group that designs around 20 games every year, each one created to explore

specific customer needs. The number one question we always ask is what are we trying to do with the

game, right? What is the outcome? How is the game fitting into a research or an ytic or an

educational portfolio for where it's trying to fit? It's not all about, hey, I've got this

combat position. Let's do more of this. It's always, what are we trying to do? At CNA

we design war games to fit into whatever problem space our sponsor is actually looking for

Once CNA's Wargamers determine their objectives, they yze the game and consider what contingencies and concerns might evolve during play

Then they set up a wargame focused on that operation, ensuring it encourages players to explore what-if scenarios

We play through those what-if scenarios and our data collectors are going to record what happened, why

what are some of the contingency planning exercises that need to be considered so we can write a report about

hey, have you thought about this? Have you thought about this? That goes back to those sponsors and helps them to understand

what they may or may not need to think through in the whole problem space

Sapinski says the war games enable participants to engage in realistic simulations

that hopefully spark discussions around decision-making, operational planning, and contingency scenarios. So we hope that our sponsors take the output of that game

and use them to decide where they really need to be thinking about

so that way they can decide where and how to put their efforts in the future. Let it really inform their decision making

Over the course of a decade at CNA, Sapinski estimates he's designed more than 60 war games

And every year, he and a team of 12 execute as many as 20 of them for their customers

One thing he was quick to point out, war games are just one piece of any eventual solution

I've been talking a lot about ytic war games, but war games provide an immersive educational experience as well

But they're not standalone. They need to be emphasized from an ytic perspective with a real ytic plan and program that they're feeding

and from an educational perspective with a real educational curriculum. So that way they're not standing all alone by themselves and you get reinforcement learning and reinforcement ysis

through all the other methods that really support what we call the cycle of research

that really is that feedback loop between exercises, ysis, and war games

that helps you understand the full spectrum of conflict. Sapinski was also quick to point out the outcomes of their war games

usually have long-term implications rather than immediate impacts, stressing they should not be used for quick decisions or major strategy changes

Instead, war games identify key issues for deeper ysis. $898 million

That, according to a newly released congressional report, is how much the U.S. Navy is asking Congress

to allot in fiscal year 2025 for the carrier-based aerial refueling system

That number would greenlight the procurement of three MQ-25 Stingrays, marking the start of low-rate initial production

from the folks at Boeing Defense. And that all brings us to this week's comms chat

Back in 2016, the Navy decided to scrap its unmanned carrier-launched surveillance and strike program for the carrier-based aerial refueling system, or what came to be known as the MQ-25 Stingray, essentially an airborne gas station

The Navy said the MQ-25 would relieve FA-18EF Super Hornet fighters from having to conduct air-to-air refueling missions for carrier airwings

Fast forward nearly a decade and the Stingray is getting closer to becoming a reality

Those aircraft in final assembly also represent us transitioning into the bespoke factory

specifically designed for MQ-25, over 300,000 square foot of Henry Ford manufacturing production

line And so what that is going to do for us and the Navy is take us to ground test here soon That lead into getting back in the air this fall So first fly since we done the last flights with the prototype that we talked about I think last year

And that'll roll into testing the aircraft on the aircraft carrier next year

And the intent for that, for the Airboss, Vice Admiral Cheever, who was speaking about this here at Sierra Space, is to start deploying in 2027

John Scudie is Boeing's business development lead and advanced capabilities director. He says the timing for the next step in the Stingray's development could not be much better

You might have heard Secretary of the Navy talking about shipbuilding. Same thing in aviation, right

And so this is kind of the vanguard for autonomous platforms. The Navy is looking to us to have those autonomous behaviors and get the aircraft

airborne to work on man-on-man teaming and interface with manned platforms. but also to lead that charge with some of the other things that we're doing for 5th, 6th Gen aircraft

that you might have also seen in the press here recently as well. It's that eye on the future that Scooty says is driving much of what's happening with not only the MQ-25

but the Department of Defense and America's allies. Having the ability to have this platform be the centerpiece

and facilitate manned platforms in a different way by presenting sensors forward

maybe in a contested environment, those sorts of things, because that's one of the reasons why you

have an unmanned aircraft. Getting those dirty, dangerous, and boring missions out of the way so

the manned platforms can do their work in other domains or collaboratively is really important

And that collaboration is going to then help facilitate how we, Naval Aviation Enterprise

and even Air Force and other Air Forces start to work together in that manned, unmanned trust

to have all the assets to be able to deter and defend

If all goes to plan and the Navy gets what it's asking for from Congress

the MQ-25 program includes a total of 76 aircraft, 67 for operational needs with an additional nine designated for testing and development

All opinions expressed in this segment are solely the opinions of the contributors

All right, well, that just about does it for this week's episode of Weapons and Warfare

As always, we want to encourage you to like and subscribe to our social media feeds and

download the Straight Arrow News app today. For this week's wrap, the Weapons and Warfare team decided we should probably make the case

it's time for America to get its act together and quickly. Why

Well, let's just go ahead and take a gander at current global events that could impact

U.S. national security, and keep in mind, this is not an exhaustive list. Obviously, there's the

war in Ukraine, growing tensions in the South China Sea and Western Pacific, growing tensions

between China and India, as well as between Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan. The Middle East

as always, is a powder keg, and Venezuela still wants to invade Guyana. In the midst of all of

that chaos, at least three nuclear powers and American adversaries, China, Russia, and North

Korea are working together more closely than they ever have before, while also not so secretly

helping Iran become the latest nuclear-armed member of Club Anti-America. And at home

instead of standing with our allies and facing these global threats head-on with a unifying

sense of purpose, there's chaos. Whether it's the war on wokeness, the White House's trade wars

or its fight with federal offices, or the defense secretary reportedly sharing classified information yet again

but this time with his wife and brother and private lawyer over non-secured third-party apps like Signal

all of the chaos can't go unnoticed by our allies and our enemies

And make no mistake, our enemies want us in disarray. Because while Russia or China may not try and attack the mainland U.S. directly

if we're too busy fighting with each other, we aren't focused on what our real enemies are doing

And that could be more costly than any battle. I mean, our Secretary of Education pronounces AI as A1

Meanwhile, China could win the actual AI race without firing a single shot

George Washington once said, To err is nature, to rectify error is glory

If we really want to be a great nation, we gotta fix this stuff. Right now

For senior producer Brett Baker, video editor Brian Spencer, and graphics artist Dakota Patio

I'm Ryan Robertson, Straight Arrow News, signing off