Military contractor Anduril experiences engine explosion during static fire test
The military contractor Anduril, which builds a variety of space-based technologies mostly for the Pentagon, had a solid rocket motor explode during static fire test last week at its facility in Mississippi.
According to a statement by the company’s CEO, no one was hurt, and the company was assessing the damage and pinpointing the cause of the explosion.
A solid rocket motor exploded during a test fire at our factory in Mississippi. Most importantly, no one was hurt. The safety systems worked exactly as designed. The team responded exactly the way they’ve trained to, and damages to our test stand were minimal. By the end of the day everyone was already focused on understanding what went wrong and getting ready for the next test.
In 2023 Anduril had acquired the solid-fueled rocket motor company Adranos, and has since been developing these motors for missile use. The company has also partnered with Rocket Lab as part of that company’s 20-launch Pentagon deal for testing hypersonic technology with its HASTE suborbital version of its Election rocket.
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As Elon says, if you’re not blowing anything up, you aren’t pushing hard enough. Anduril would seem to be pushing hard enough.
It recently won a major contract to build robot fighter planes – one of two companies to do so. The other was General Atomics which has been building the large Predator and Reaper combat drones for decades now. The legacy primes got shut out entirely – yet more evidence that the Hegseth War Department has no particular interest in the future health and well-being of contractors that have been coasting for decades.
The robot fighter planes are smaller and are only a small fraction of the unit cost of any manned fighter plane. The robots are supposed to act as “trusted wingmen” to the manned fighters. I think that they will, in a few short years, entirely replace the latter.
Minor nitpick – this was a solid rocket motor failure, not an engine. The Anduril facility referenced produces SRMs, not engines.
John: You are right of course. I have changed “engine” to “motor” in the post.