The Pentagon awarded Anduril Industries a contract worth $250 million to counter drone attacks against U.S. forces with the company’s recoverable Roadrunner interceptor. Under the deal, the Defense Department will buy 500 Roadrunner all-up rounds as well as the firm’s portable Pulsar electronic-warfare capability. Deliveries will begin this year and continue through the end of 2025.

An Anduril spokesperson declined to name the firm’s DOD customer due to security concerns, but the company said the contract will serve multiple military services in “priority regions where U.S. forces face significant threats” from drones. The firm is already on a 10-year, indefinite-delivery contract worth up to $1 billion with U.S. Special Operations Command to supply counter-drone hardware and software.

Anduril unveiled Roadrunner last December after spending two years secretly developing it with internal funding. The company plans to quickly scale to quantities in the hundreds of thousands. The use of drones and loitering munitions on the battlefield has expanded in recent years, prompting the Department of Defense to develop a strong defense against the use of hostile drones by adversaries like Iran and its proxies.

The Pentagon created the Joint Counter-Unmanned Aircraft Systems Office in 2019 to respond to drone threats, and in 2023, a new DoD initiative called Replicator was revealed to field thousands of autonomous systems by next summer, focusing on Counter-UAS. Anduril believes Roadrunner offers a solution adaptable to changing threats, with the system built to carry a variety of payloads.