Last Friday. A rocket motor blew up.
It happened at Anduril’s test site in Mississippi. Just another bruised ego in the startup’s bid to dominate missile propulsion for the military. No one got hurt, but the equipment took it. Hard.
Anduril kept quiet until WIRED asked questions. Then Chief Operating Officer Matt Grimm posted on social media Tuesday. He showed photos of the charred remains. See? We’re still standing.
“No injuries,” he wrote. The testing stand was toast though.
Three sources told WIRED this is unusual. They couldn’t remember another test going boom in the last few years. They don’t know why it exploded now either.
The damage stopped prototype testing. That’s the money-maker right now. Rebuilding the stand could take two months. One source thinks it will be weeks, at best. Grimm promised testing resumes “within weeks.”
Disciplined iteration begets steady progress
He claimed production stays on schedule. Shannon Prior, the company spokesperson, pointed people to Grimm’s post and vanished.
Is the timeline real?
Anduril said mass production starts July 1, 205. Wait, no. July 1, 2024. They missed that date by a year. Four sources confirmed it. They disputed Grimm’s optimism.
A former Pentagon official said the delays were obvious from day one. You can’t just build complex solid rocket motors on deadline in America. Two companies hold the monopoly. The Pentagon needs startups like Anduril to fix the shortage. It hasn’t happened yet.
A $61 Billion Hot Mess
Valued at $61 billion, Anduril sells drones, subs, and spy gear worldwide. The McHenry, Mississippi rocket unit is the trouble spot.
Remember March? WIired reported on safety nightmares. An employee burned his hand on an igniter. Expensive gear failed to work. Founder Palmer Luckey called it “inane stuff” online. Chairman Trae Stephens said they’re “fixing problems as we find.”
Cute.
Before mass production, they make prototypes. Mostly for the US Navy. That side hustle brought in tens of millions last year. It’s legit money. Critics admit that much. They test how long fuel burns, measure thrust, send data to clients. Now that data stream might pause.
Mass production likely slides another year. Two people think so.
Executives promised resources. In April, they stopped.
They moved struggling equipment into storage. Scraped the plans. They decided to start from scratch with more manual labor. One source called it a “hot mess.” They gutted the building. Wiped three years of work off the floor.
Fire and Bad Foundations
Anduril bought Adranos in 2023 to get into rockets. The McHenry site was already a wreck.
In 2021 a fire melted aluminum walls. Someone left trash near heat. Construction errors forced rebuilds of other buildings later. This year? They canceled orders for new machining shop tools. They needed cash to plug leaks elsewhere.
Morale is tanking.
Perks like free lunches and snacks? Gone. Employees are leaving. Anduril hires new recruits constantly. A public job listing shows they want a new Head of Production in McHenry again. Second time in a year.
They call it “mission-critical.”
Maybe it is. Just not in the way Luckey hopes.
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