Anduril has unveiled Steelfin, a proposed family of surface-to-air interceptors designed to address threats ranging from drones and cruise missiles to ballistic and hypersonic weapons.
Steelfin is designed around a common two-stage architecture and comprises a first-stage booster and a terminal interceptor.
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Under the design outlined by Anduril, the booster can be changed to meet differing range, launch, performance and packing-density requirements, while the second stage retains a common airframe, avionics, software, flight-control system and interfaces.
The company said open interfaces in the terminal stage would allow it to incorporate different seekers, mission systems and other components without redesigning the entire interceptor.
This approach is intended to produce variants for point defence, lower-tier integrated air and missile defence, and upper-tier ballistic missile defence.
According to Anduril, Steelfin is designed to be used with existing land- and sea-based launch infrastructure, including the M903A2 launcher, Mk 41 Vertical Launch System and Typhon system, as well as emerging containerised launchers.
The system is also intended to integrate with existing fire-control software, including Aegis and the Integrated Battle Command System (IBCS).
Anduril has already carried out ballistic testing with prototype air vehicles and plans to start flight tests of Steelfin variants in the coming year.
Anduril is planning to produce several thousand Steelfin variants annually in the near term, with its common missile architecture designed to allow different versions to be built on the same production lines using shared tools, staff, and facilities, rather than requiring separate manufacturing arrangements for each type.
The design also permits integration of commercial off-the-shelf components, and its open-architecture subsystems can be sourced from competing suppliers.
This approach is expected to broaden the supplier base and reduce the risk of supply chain disruptions.
The announcement comes amid increasing demand for air defence solutions capable of engaging a wider array of threats while avoiding the inefficient use of high-cost interceptors against low-cost targets.
Steelfin is intended to give users more flexibility to align interceptor performance and cost with specific operational needs.
