Saab taps Anduril to build rocket motors for ground-launched bomb

Saab has picked emerging solid rocket motor producer Anduril Rocket Motor Systems to design and build solid rocket motors for its Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb, according to officials from both companies.

The selection of Anduril jump-starts the company’s effort to become a new major solid rocket motor supplier in the U.S. – a small pool with currently just two big players.

Amid the need to dramatically ramp up munitions production in the U.S. to meet future needs and replenish stock sent to Ukraine, more companies are stepping into the specialized business.

The new teaming arrangement is about building both Saab’s meaningful presence in the U.S. and its partners. “This is one of the areas that is really exciting for us, is building these strategic partners in the U.S., which is going to complement our broader capacity and capability growth strategy,” Brad Barnard, the Swedish company’s U.S. subsidiary’s vice president and general manager of land systems, told Defense News.

Saab and Boeing partnered in 2014 to develop their GLSDB, a cost-effective, precision-fires munition with 360-degree coverage. The team demonstrated the capability in 2019 and was awarded a U.S. Air Force contract in 2023 to support U.S. European Command, according to Barnard.

In an effort to ensure GLSDB stays relevant in the future, the team identified a “first and most critical step” in its roadmap to find a new rocket motor partner and moving away from the government furnished, no-longer-in-production M26 MLRS solid rocket motor currently used in the munition, he said.

Following a competitive effort to select a new SRM, Saab and Boeing selected Anduril. “They really distinguished themselves through the process by leaning forward with the appropriate technical solution, leaning forward with their timeline for delivery,” Barnard said.

Both Anduril and Saab have taken major steps to increase their footprints in U.S. defense manufacturing. Saab is building a new facility in Grayling, Michigan, where it plans to produce GLSDB stateside. Barnard said the company is about a year away from rolling first systems off the line there.

Anduril purchased a solid rocket motor company in 2023 and has invested $75 million to build a brand-new solid rocket motor production facility on a 450 acre property in McHenry, Mississippi.

“We believe and have conviction that in the solid rocket motor business in our nation, we need to have more competition,” Neil Thurgood, Anduril’s senior vice president overseeing the company’s air and ground deterrence division, told Defense News. “It is the intent of Anduril to be the third solid rocket motor provider for our nation,” Thurgood said.

The idea is to ultimately produce around 6,000 solid rocket motors annually, he noted.

Roughly 100 days following an initial certification process, Anduril can move into full-rate production, according to Thurgood.

“We’re super excited to be a partner with Saab on this. We believe we’re in a really good position to scale quickly with the factory and the innovation that we use in the factories,” Thurgood said.

Anduril is planning to deliver an improved design that is optimized for safety and affordability, brings in new sub-tier suppliers, and uses novel manufacturing that will enable the company to transition the GLSDB motor into full-rate production in 2026.

“When you make a new solid rocket motor, some people believe you can just take the recipe from someone else and remake it in another kitchen,” Thurgood said. “It’s not really quite that easy.”

Anduril’s team is working on refining those specific recipes for various size munitions for which it will deliver rocket motors from 4.75 inch rockets for the U.S. Army to larger hypersonic rocket motor for the U.S. Navy’s STANDARD missile program and now for GLSDB.

The company is applying single-piece-flow manufacturing, a bladeless high-speed mixer and other automation solutions to build SRMs, which will contribute to production speed and better quality, Thurgood added.

The production facility is built in a modular way “so that any given day we can make different motors down the same production line, same process,” Thurgood said, which is a departure from how solid rocket motors are historically manufactured.

Once the exact propellant recipe for the GLSDB is determined, the team will move into testing and qualifying the SRM to roll into the production line, according to Thurgood. A full system-level test will likely take place in the 2nd or 3rd quarter of next year, he added.