Jonathan B.’s Post

Nothing in technology moves forward until something fails first. Failure is not a setback. It is the signal that you have reached the edge of what is known, and the only way to expand that edge is to keep pushing into it. The organizations and entrepreneurs who grow the fastest are not the ones who hide their mistakes. They are the ones who learn from them in real time, in full view, and convert those lessons into momentum. Failure is data. It exposes the limits of a system, a process, or an assumption. It shows you what must be rebuilt, refined, or reinvented. When you treat failure as feedback, you accelerate the cycle of improvement and discovery. We are watching this play out at the highest levels of defense technology. Anduril recently experienced several high-visibility setbacks when multiple unmanned systems failed during military evaluations. These incidents generated headlines, but they also generated clarity. They revealed the adjustments required to strengthen the systems and highlighted why open testing and rapid iteration are essential for any organization that claims to innovate. Companies who avoid failure usually avoid growth. Those who are willing to fail forward and fail publicly learn faster, adapt faster, and build stronger. Progress belongs to the people who are willing to be wrong on the way to getting it right. https://lnkd.in/gprSm-_t #FailureIsData #FailForward #InnovationLeadership #TechInnovation #EntrepreneurMindset #BuildInPublic #LearnFast #DefenseTech #FutureOfTechnology #LeadershipDevelopment

*Chew OS* My personal operating system for solving hard problems. **1. Comfortable as Unconventional** I think across disciplines and outside traditional contexts, question first assumptions, and aim to build systems that make complex work feel simpler. Why: Novel problems rarely yield to conventional thinking. How: I borrow ideas freely: from startups, engineering, history, economics, and especially works of fiction, and adapt them to the problem. The goal isn’t to be different; it’s to produce more durable solutions. “A change in perspective is worth 15 IQ points.” ⸻ **2. Clarity Precedes Velocity** I believe in a high default sense of urgency, but alignment, not urgency, is what creates speed. Why: Most execution problems are actually definition problems: unclear ownership, shifting objectives, competing assumptions, or different mental models. How: I invest early in defining the problem, constraints, stakeholders, and success criteria. Once everyone shares the same picture, execution accelerates naturally. “What are we solving for?” ⸻ **3. Solve the System** I rarely optimize individual tasks before understanding the system that produced them. Why: Most recurring problems are symptoms, not root causes. Solving symptoms creates more work; improving systems makes the problems disappear. How: When I encounter friction, I ask, “What system incentivized this?” before asking, “Who owns this?” “Every system is perfectly designed to produce the results it gets.” ⸻ **4. Communicate for the Reader** Communication is a product, not a byproduct. Why: The purpose of communication isn’t to express what I know: it’s to help someone else make a decision or take action. If they have to work to understand it, I’ve shifted the burden onto them. How: I adapt the format, depth, and level of detail to the audience. My default is concise because attention is scarce (and verbosity often betrays that a problem is poorly understood). But when a decision deserves six pages, I’ll write six pages. “Write for the reader.” ⸻ **5. Constraints Are the Design** Constraints aren’t obstacles to the work… they define the work. Why: The most valuable operational problems involve competing priorities, limited resources, regulations, security, geography, and imperfect information. Anyone can design a solution without constraints. How: Rather than wishing constraints away, I treat them as design inputs. The best solutions satisfy the greatest number of constraints with the least complexity. “Constraints drive creativity.” #Leadership #Operations #BizOps #DecisionMaking #SystemsThinking

Proud to see Anduril take first place in the XPRIZE Autonomous Wildfire Response competition. The team brought together sensing, autonomy, command and control, and multiple systems to demonstrate an integrated response that could detect and characterize a fire, coordinate assets, and respond with minimal human intervention. What makes this especially exciting is the ability to take capabilities we have built for very different missions and apply them to new problems. We have a powerful set of hardware, software, and autonomy capabilities, with a lot of potential to keep finding new ways to put them to work. In areas like wildfire response, that can mean earlier detection, faster response, less risk to people in harm's way, and better outcomes for communities and responders. Especially proud of our team that had the opportunity to contribute directly to this effort. Huge congratulations to Taha Shamshudin and everyone across Anduril who put so much into making this happen. Excited to see where we take it next.

Last week the U.S. Army made something official that the defense world has been watching quietly for months. Lt. Gen. Frank Lozano, the Army's program acquisition executive for Fires, named Anduril Industries as a potential hypersonic weapons supplier at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on July 14. He listed Anduril alongside Castelion and Ursa Major as companies the Army is actively engaging to build what he called greater magazine depth from a hypersonic perspective. This is a bigger deal than it might sound. Anduril had never previously identified a government customer for its hypersonic program. Until last week, the program was known mostly through job postings in their Air Dominance and Strike division and a $30 million Rocket Lab contract for three HASTE hypersonic test flights, the first of which is scheduled for November 2026. The backstory is what gets my attention as an investor. Anduril built a solid rocket motor facility in McHenry, Mississippi for $75 million of their own capital, not government funding, going from groundbreaking to full rate production in 18 months. They have already conducted over 700 motor test fires and are targeting 6,000 motors annually by end of 2026. That makes them only the third major U.S. solid rocket motor supplier after Northrop Grumman and Aerojet Rocketdyne. The Army's goal is a high/low mix of exquisite and low-cost hypersonic capabilities to dramatically scale up stockpiles within the next five years. Anduril is positioning itself as the low-cost, high-volume player in that equation. Eight years old. Self-funded production lines. Now named by the Army as a hypersonic supplier. The traditional defense prime model is getting pressured from every direction. Anyone else watching how fast Anduril is expanding across domains? #Anduril #DefenseTech #Hypersonics #NationalSecurity #DefenseInnovation #ArmyModernization

Anduril Industries has launched its massive Arsenal-1 manufacturing facility in Ohio and will begin producing its Fury combat drone months ahead of schedule (originally planned for mid-2026), while staying under budget, something rare in defense projects. Arsenal-1 is a large-scale, high-speed production campus built to solve the defense industry’s “valley of death” problem, bridging the gap between prototype and mass production. The Fury drone itself went from concept to flight in just one year, and now the facility is ready to produce it at scale. The factory is highly flexible: using a software platform (Arsenal OS), it can quickly switch production between multiple systems, like the Fury drone, Roadrunner interceptor, and Barracuda missiles, often in days instead of years. A key advantage is Anduril’s reliance on commercial, off-the-shelf components (about 90% of parts), which lowers costs, avoids supply bottlenecks, and allows existing industries (like automotive and aerospace) to plug into the supply chain. This also means workers from those industries can quickly transition into defense manufacturing roles. The project represents over $900 million in investment, with plans for 4,000 jobs and a total economic impact of around $2 billion. Located near Rickenbacker International Airport, the site leverages Ohio’s strong manufacturing and aerospace workforce. https://lnkd.in/e2n_DZjq #Defense #Manufacturing #Aerospace #DefenseInnovation #AI #AutonomousSystems #SupplyChain #EconomicDevelopment #Ohio #NationalSecurity JobsOhio

Anduril Industries's Arsenal-1 facility in Pickaway County, Ohio, opens this week. Months ahead of schedule. The Army already has a live $87 million task order running with them for a counter-drone control system under a new $20 billion enterprise agreement. Factory opening. Contract running. Same week. That is not normal. The standard defense hardware cycle runs in one direction: win the contract, set up the program office, figure out manufacturing, then build the thing. Years go by. Schedules drift. Most primes built their business around managing that drift, not eliminating it. Anduril treated the factory as infrastructure. Built it first. Made the line production-ready before the contract existed. So when the task order came through, the program office was not betting on whether a factory would eventually exist. It was already being built. That changes the risk calculation for the buyer in a very specific way. The $20 billion enterprise agreement also matters because of how fast task orders move under it. A full competitive procurement takes 12 to 18 months. Task orders under this vehicle move in weeks. The first task order leverages Lattice software to command a fleet that the Ohio factory is already built to mass-produce. Autonomous logistics, ISR, and ground systems are all in scope for what follows. For every other company competing in autonomous systems right now, one question matters above the rest: can you show a manufacturing plan that is already running before the contract exists? Anduril just answered it. In Ohio. This week. Full newsletter can be found at XOVA_News on Substack (coming soon on linkedin XOVA_News page) #DefenseTech #GovCon #IndustrialBase #CUAS #Manufacturing #DIU #USArmy #DefenseInnovation #XOVA #IndustrialSoftware #Technology #AI #Robotics  #Engineering

Long-range precision fires and stand-off strike weapons are fundamental to America’s ability to deter our adversaries, but existing solutions are too expensive, too exquisite, and too hard to produce at scale. Anduril Industries is prepared to deliver. On May 13, 2026, the U.S. Department of War announced a framework agreement with Anduril Industries to rapidly scale production of a new, affordable and mass-producible cruise missile solution to the long-range precision fires and stand-off strike problem: surface-launched Barracuda-500M (SLB-500M). The framework agreement signed between Anduril and the Office of the Undersecretary of War for Research and Engineering (OSW(R&E)) covers the procurement and delivery of a minimum of 3,000 all-up SLB-500M systems to the Army’s Program Acquisition Executive FIRES (PAE FIRES) across three years as part of the Ground-Launched Low-Cost Containerized Munition program, with ability to increase that number based on evolving DoW requirements. Under the agreement, Anduril will scale production to deliver a minimum of 1,000 all-up rounds per year, with the first tranche of deliveries taking place in the first half of 2027, just one year after contract award. Anduril will also deliver the associated containerized launch system for SLB-500M, starting with more than 60 launchers in 2027. The agreement represents a departure from the traditional approach to munitions procurement that has resulted in buys of critical munitions that peak in the low hundreds of rounds per year. Together, OSW(R&E) and Anduril have established a new precedent for munitions procurement that emphasizes rapid, large-scale production of affordable munitions, forging a new path to rebuild America’s munitions inventories that is directly aligned with the Department’s focus on acquisition transformation. By establishing a framework for large-scale procurement of SLB-500M across several years, the Department has energized the non-traditional industrial base, capitalizing on Anduril’s complementary investments to dramatically increase production capacity for critical munitions. Read more https://wp.me/pfQOBK-132J

During the Army’s Operation Jailbreak, many asked why all the jailbroken systems were being integrated into Lattice. The answer is simple: the Army ran a free and open competition last year to replace its software command and control system for counter-UAS and short-range air defense. Anduril won that competition, and Lattice is now becoming the centerpiece of that new program of record: IBCS-Manevuer. That said, the 77 interfaces that were written during Jailbreak can be used to move that jailbroken data into any other modern software system. Those integrations were not done by Anduril engineers, but by the companies that build those systems, using Lattice’s software development kit, which is publicly available on the Army website. All of the jailbroken data belongs to, and is freely available to, the Army. This is the definition of openness and ease of integration. The right to integrate is the Army’s. Lattice just helped the Army to assert that right.

While Anduril Industries continues to make impressive strides in the defense tech sector, it’s worth noting that the innovation landscape is increasingly crowded. We are seeing a surge of incredible advancements from a variety of players. Both established firms and emerging startups that are equally deserving of the spotlight. It’s an exciting time to watch the industry evolve as competition drives better capabilities for the warfighter.

The successful first flight of Anduril's YFQ-44A marks a significant advancement in the U.S. Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft - CCA program. This semi-autonomous aircraft, designed as a robotic wingman, operates without traditional remote control, completing pre-planned missions and managing its own flight controls while monitored by a human operator. Achieving this milestone in just 556 days, Anduril showcases a development speed unparalleled in recent fighter programs, addressing urgent strategic needs for affordable mass and rapid deployment. The CCA program aims to enhance air combat capabilities by combining crewed fighters with uncrewed, autonomous platforms to multiply lethality and survivability. Anduril's approach combines rapid hardware iteration and sophisticated autonomy software, supported by their new large-scale manufacturing facility in Columbus, Ohio. The competition between Anduril and General Atomics drives innovation as the Air Force prepares for a production decision in fiscal year 2026, with up to 1,000 drones potentially fielded. This effort signals a shift toward distributed force structures and manned-unmanned teaming, promising new tactical options and enhanced operational resilience. #Anduril #USA #AirCombat Read more: https://lnkd.in/ekbZ_U2F