The annual AUSA expo is under way, and as some attendees have noted this year the show seems to be wall-to-wall drones and counter-drone systems. One of the more interesting of many new products is the Bolt-M from Anduril which will be supplied to the Marine Corps: a high-end American take on the hordes of FPV kamikaze drones deployed by Ukraine and Russia
In Ukraine, such drones are often assembled at kitchen tables from commercial components from China. Though unsophisticated, they are efficient engines of destruction, and at around $500 apiece are destroying tanks, artillery, trucks and foxholes at a high rate.
Anduril is a disruptor, a billion-dollar startup that aims to bring Silicon Valley, and in particular revolutionary AI, to the defense sector. What new capabilities does their attack drone bring to the fight — and at what cost?
No Piloting Skill Required
The Bolt is a family of backpackable quadcopter drones. The base configuration is a scout drone for ISR (intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) missions, the Bolt-M is essentially similar but carries an advanced 3-pound warhead. It has a thermal imager for night operations, an extra not routinely included in low-cost FPVs.
Bolt-M has a range of 12 miles / 20 kilometers, comparable to the FPVs used in Ukraine, though its flight time of 40 minutes is greater. The real upgrade is in its onboard processing power.
While FPV operators need sharp reflexes and weeks of training and practice, Bolt-M removes the need for a skilled operator with a point-and-click interface to select the target. An AI pilot does all the work. (You could argue whether it even counts as FPV). Once locked on, Bolt-M will continue automatically to the target even if communications are lost, giving it a high degree of immunity to electronic warfare.
“Modern ground forces need large numbers of low-cost, lightweight, man portable, and reliable loitering munitions that are capable of delivering outsized performance without requiring specialized operators,” according to Anduril’s website.
A video (above) shows Bolt-M targeting a soft-skinned vehicle and using an airburst warhead, one of several developed specially for the drone. This type of warhead is several times more effective against infantry and unarmored vehicles than one which detonates on impact. Anduril say there is also an ant-tank warhead, and the operator can easily attach whichever type is needed as well as selecting the angle of attack at will. The munitions have physical and software safety features including an electronic safe and arm device (ESAD); if the drone does not find a target, it can return and be safely deactivated for reuse.
These features make Bolt-M far more suited to the U.S. military than basic Ukrainian-style FPVs. However, the extra capability comes at a price.
An Anduril spokesman told Breaking Defense that “In round numbers, typical Bolt configurations are in the low tens of thousands of dollars,” [my emphasis] depending on the exact payload and configuration.
Is a $20,000 FPV a viable weapon?
The American Way Of War
The Bolt-M is a huge improvement over the U.S. Switchblade 300 previously used in Ukraine. As you would expect for a weapon developed a decade later it is far more capable; it also carries a much bigger warhead – the SwitchBlade 300 cannot destroy armored vehicles – and costs significantly less than the $58,000 Switchblade.
There is no doubt that the Bolt-M has been carefully engineered to U.S. military requirements. Anduril are supplying it to the U.S. Marine Corps in the next six months under their Organic Precision Fires-Light (OPF-L) program. But the Pentagon’s procurement process appears to be hard-wired to generate drones which are eye-wateringly expensive compared to their commercial counterparts — some cost their weight in gold.
This can be frustrating for contractors who have come from the commercial drone world and who know what can be made for a few hundred dollars.
In a recent interview, George Matus, founder and CEO of Teal Drones, told me about the need for a future of “affordable, capable, scalable drones” rather than the current exquisite technology. In another recent interview Ryan Gury, CEO and Co-founder of Performance Drone Works, makers of the Army’s new C-100, explained that it was essential for drones to be “consumable” and produced at scale.
Ivan Tolchinsky, whose company Atlas Dynamics makes drones for Ukraine, was even more explicit about the necessity of reining in expensive technology.
“I don’t want to sell one drone for a million dollars,” Tolchinsky told me. “I just want to sell a million of them for one dollar.”
That may not be a recipe for high company profits, traditionally found more at the gold-plating end of the U.S. defense sector. But it would certainly give the taxpayer more bang for their buck.
Bolt-M: A Path To The Future?
Ukrainian journal Defence Express was quick to criticize the Bolt-M, stating that, like other American designs, it fails to incorporate the key lesson of FPV warfare “they are, first of all, cheap and produced at scale.” Instead they suggest the design might be adapted into a reusable, AI-enabled light bomber for conditions of intense jamming.
AI and other advanced capabilities are not inherently expensive. Auterion’s Skynode S AI autopilot is already in action in Ukraine on a small scale. It can carry out terminal guidance, navigation without GPS, and much else, thanks to open-source software. Auterion CEO Dr Lorenz Meier told me the cost was “in the range of an Android phone, mid-hundreds of U.S. dollars.” Ukraine has also developed low-cost airburst warheads and other drone technologies using commercial hardware .
Effective drones do not need to cost tens of thousands, and it is hard to exaggerate the effect of FPVs deployed at scale. According to President Zelensky, Ukraine has already contracted for 1.5 million drones this year and could make 4 million per year going forward.
This effort supplies vast numbers of drones at the front lines. Russian forces talk about ten or more FPVs targeting every vehicle they send forward, with more FPVs pursuing survivors fleeing on foot.
The drones are numerous enough to be flown over Russian lines to attack supply trucks, vans and ATVs to cut off the front line. They hunt down Russian artillery at long range. FPVs with thermobaric warheads blast Russian bunkers and trenches; flamethrowing FPV ‘dragon drones’ burn up tree lines and defensive positions. And, increasingly, we see individual Russian soldiers playing a deadly game of hide-and-seek as FPV drones chase them down one by one. Ukraine has more FPVs than the Russians have soldiers, so all of them can be targeted individually.
According to French Army Chief of Staff General Pierre Schill speaking at a conference this summer, small drones now cause “about 80% of the destruction on the front line in Ukraine.”
An American platoon with three or four advanced attack drones will save them for high-value targets, not go hunting trucks or individual adversaries. Bolt-M certainly gives a higher chance of a kill than a basic FPV, but it is too pricey to be fielded at scale.
However, Bolt-M and munitions like it can pave the way to the future. By giving the U.S. military a taste of FPV capability, Bolt-M will help incorporate drones into the American way of fighting, allow them to develop their drone warfare tactics and drive demand for much larger numbers.
Such advanced weapons cannot be made at low cost in small numbers; scale to the size of Ukraine’s drone force and things might change. George Matus of Teal argues that the U.S. military could scale up drone production for the price of one F-35 fighter. Maybe Bolt-M will be the shiny new gadget which makes the Pentagon realize they need much, much more of the same.
