Anduril performs Barracuda-100M flight tests for US Army's High-Speed Maneuverable Missile programme

Anduril's L-29 surrogate aircraft launches a Barracuda-100M on an HSMM test in 2025. (Anduril)

The US Army and Anduril have disclosed a series of tests of the Barracuda-100M missile for the High-Speed Maneuverable Missile (HSMM) programme, including powered flights, performance envelope expansion, and tests of the service-developed Precision Target Acquisition Seeker (PTAS), the army and company said in separate 14 July statements. HSMM is a test programme intended to build an air- or ground-launched missile capable of reaching targets up to 120 km away.

“Back in 2023, [Anduril] started off with design reviews and iterated on a lot of trade studies to refine the [Barracuda-100M] air vehicle dynamics … specifically making sure that we're maturing the subsystems and the air vehicle performance to meet the HSMM requirements,” Stephen Milano, Anduril's senior director for advanced effects, told reporters on 15 July.

“In 2024 we hit a handful of test milestones. We started off with our wind tunnel and environmental testing, and at the end of 2024 we did our initial powered flight testing off of an [Aero L-29 Delfin] surrogate aircraft at our private test range that Anduril operates,” Milano continued.

In May 2025, the company performed additional flight testing “to verify and expand the vehicle's envelope altitudes, release altitudes, [and] performance altitudes of both the engine and the performance of the vehicle management system,” Milano added. “We proved out autonomous launch mission execution and multiple terminal guidance strike capabilities throughout the test sequence … as well as the control that the army is seeking out of [its] test vehicle and future operational capabilities. Throughout each of these [tests] we hit the targets as we anticipated, but most importantly, we instantiated the terminal guidance manoeuvres that were the most interesting to the army customer.”