Anduril’s missile motor factory near the Gulf Coast of Mississippi already seemed to be running behind schedule when, about a year ago, a young engineer scorched his hand. The employee, whose previous job had been at a company that made outdoor gear, was assembling one of Anduril’s first electrical igniters, known around the factory as a “white hot.” It was a small but crucial part in the $30.5 billion defense startup’s plan to transform the design, assembly, and sale of military technology. The “white hot” would light a test sample of Anduril’s propellant—a rubbery substance meant to power an array of different US and allied missiles.
Before the injury, the engineer’s team hadn’t conducted a job safety analysis or mandated the use of a safety shield. He wore rubber gloves not rated for fire protection. When the igniter misfired in a flash of white, the worker’s right hand suffered burns.
Local emergency services didn’t receive a call; the engineer’s boss drove him to a hospital, one person says. A photo his partner posted showed him sleeping with his hand wrapped in gauze. She solicited donations on Facebook, saying the family would lose its sole source of income while he recovered and visited Alabama for checkups.
The igniter incident is among a number of safety concerns and project challenges at Anduril’s manufacturing operations that WIRED can reveal here for the first time. This investigation is based on interviews with 37 former and current employees and contractors, including more than 20 with direct knowledge of Anduril's production lines. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing nondisclosure agreements and fear of retaliation from Anduril or current employers.
Shannon Prior, an Anduril spokesperson, said on Wednesday it would not be productive to respond to WIRED’s questions about the incidents and details described in this story and declined to do so. “Upon reviewing the fact-check questions, we have identified claims that are inaccurate or misleading, reflecting a reporting process that relied heavily on former employees while excluding the company’s perspective,” she wrote in a statement. “At this stage, responding to individual assertions would not address the underlying issues with how the story was developed.”
Prior added, “If WIRED chooses to publish claims that are inaccurate or misleading, we will correct the record publicly.”
Like Elon Musk at SpaceX with rockets, Anduril’s leaders want to prove that weapons can be made faster, cheaper, and better than at legacy behemoths like Lockheed Martin and Boeing. But parts of Anduril have faced what some of the sources view as process dysfunction, management turnover, and deadline pressure beyond what they consider typical of defense and tech companies. Others describe the reality as standard growing pains. By either interpretation, the workers’ accounts reveal some of the obstacles Anduril has faced as it pursues what it views as a modern approach to making the tools of war.
Anduril products on display at headquarters in December 2023.
Photograph: Getty ImagesIn Anduril’s portrayal, traditional defense companies typically don’t build something until the customer has specified exactly what it’s looking for. By contrast, Anduril has developed about a dozen different prototype products, and acquired the startups behind a dozen more, without always knowing for sure that someone will buy them. The company can do this because of support from venture capitalists including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and Josh Kushner's Thrive Capital—more than $6 billion so far, with another $4 billion likely on the way. Its annual R&D spending is on the order of Lockheed Martin’s $2 billion last year, says Paul Kwan, managing director at investment firm General Catalyst and an observer on Anduril’s board. “That's crazy,” Kwan says.
Though Anduril executives expect the company to remain unprofitable for years given the upfront spending, it is aiming to double its valuation to $60 billion, roughly on par with L3Harris, one of the top 10 US defense contractors, which has 10 times more annual revenue. Nearly a decade into Anduril’s journey to disrupt the military-industrial complex, its more than 7,500 employees have delivered at least four Dive uncrewed submarines, several hundred Sentry border surveillance towers, hundreds of Roadrunner missiles to destroy airborne threats, and a couple thousand drones small enough to fit into a pickup truck. (And that’s not including software systems and classified orders.)
The company’s 10 or so factories, half a dozen test sites, and around 30 offices span at least 18 US states and territories and eight countries abroad, WIRED found based on public data and interviews with people who have spent time at the sites. In anticipation of orders growing, Anduril is expanding. A billion-dollar R&D facility is planned near its Southern California headquarters. A billion-dollar multipurpose factory known as Arsenal-1 is under construction outside Columbus, Ohio. Anduril expects to hire 4,000 people there by 2035, an Ohio record that led the state and an economic development group to approve nearly $800 million in grants and tax credits. Anduril has said it tries to keep its operations deliberately human, shunning the expense, time, and inflexibility of automating production.
Anduril cofounder Palmer Luckey has said that the company's uncrewed Fury fighter jet went from prototype contract to test flight faster than any fighter since the end of the Korean War.
Photograph: Getty ImagesPalmer Luckey, the virtual reality pioneer who founded Anduril in 2017, has said the goal is to be agile, providing cutting-edge software and products just when militaries need them while saving taxpayers money through innovative design and production. That fits with what secretary of defense Pete Hegseth told Andurilians during a pep talk at the company’s Rhode Island factory last month: “We believe that the 85 percent, 90 percent solution tomorrow in the hands of a war fighter is far better than a 100 percent, exquisite solution five years from now.” The US and Israel’s war against Iran has underscored Luckey’s pitch. Cheap Iranian drones are hitting oil fields, diplomatic outposts, and military targets, while stockpiles of expensive and slow-to-make US weapons are reportedly depleting.
President Donald Trump is proposing the largest increase in defense spending since the Korean War, and the Pentagon is demanding better value from suppliers. It’s the perfect moment for the so-called “neoprime” to boost production. But to scale up to the flexible assembly line that Anduril executives are envisioning for Ohio will be a new feat. And descriptions from its existing factories—not only in McHenry but also in Atlanta and Morrisville, North Carolina—show the company has its work cut out.
Before Anduril got into the business of making solid rocket motors for missiles, it first tried to buy one off the shelf. According to CEO Brian Schimpf, a “traditional” supplier told the company there was a 24-month backlog—and that it wouldn’t take the business anyway. So, in mid-2023, Anduril acquired a startup called Adranos, born out of research at Purdue University. It had a recipe for a lithium-laced propellant that it claimed would offer a more efficient and less toxic burn. In hopes of commercializing the research, Adranos had set up at a mothballed post-9/11 armor plant on the edge of McHenry, in a county of roughly 20,000 people known for sawing trees into power poles. Viewing the business as potentially highly profitable, Anduril paid a sum large enough that one of the Adranos cofounders began driving multiple pricey cars, including a white Ferrari, to work, sources tell WIRED. (Reached by phone, the Adranos cofounder declined to comment.) Anduril then set about investing tens of millions of dollars and felling trees to expand the site.
Anduril cofounder and CEO Brian Schimpf at the company’s California headquarters.
Photograph: Getty ImagesWhere larger competitors Northrop Grumman and L3Harris separate the steps of their propellant production across multiple buildings, Anduril planned to use unique machinery and processes to make the material in a single building, to be called Roberto, several people say. The approach promised more motors faster but could carry risks. Northrop has claimed that an explosion last year at its factory in Utah did not disrupt operations. But for Anduril, there was the potential that “one incident could take out the entire operation,” a former employee says. As construction proceeded on Roberto, sample motors for the US Navy and other customers would continue to come from an existing building on campus known as Geisler.
For employees, the perks of working for Anduril included free health insurance, free lunch, unlimited vacation, and team outings—often with open bar tabs and families allowed—to local attractions including a Biloxi Shuckers minor-league baseball game and a Top Gun: Maverick screening. Local shops also got a boost. Anduril spent tens of thousands of dollars at nearby McDaniel's General Merchandise rather than buying tools online. Catered lunches for the nearly 100 workers came from PB's Twisted "Q" and other local eateries. Real estate agents sold new hires on homes.
Neil Thurgood, a retired Army lieutenant general and senior vice president for the McHenry team, lobbied Anduril to support the Stone County School District, which wanted as much as $2 million to help replace a nearly 70-year-old campus and build its first athletics stadium, two people say. The district offered to put Anduril signage at the stadium, incorporate its brand into “defense” cheers, and customize classes to create a pipeline of potential hires. The company wanted a “good relationship” with the community, the people add.
Donald Blasko, a retiree living down the street from the factory, started leaving earlier for his medical appointments as traffic picked up. But he didn’t mind it. “They grow, grow, grow,” he says. “That’s just progress.”
A few hundred miles away, at Anduril’s drone design and assembly facility in Atlanta, a leadership and strategy transition was under way. An engineer who started there that year recalls that when he passed through the cafeteria on his welcome tour, he was told that “it doesn’t serve dinner because you’re not supposed to be there that late.” But it quickly became clear to the engineer and others that much work was required to meet Anduril’s business goals.
The Atlanta factory, acquired in 2021 from a startup called Area-I, was set up to produce Altius drones—compact aircraft designed to “fit in a 6-inch tube like a missile and come out like a plane,” a former Anduril employee says. The drones had just made a grand public debut on the battlefields of Ukraine, in a deal funded by the US. But conditions there, including difficult terrain and Russian jamming of GPS, left them struggling. Anduril executives have said the company had to keep adapting its technology.
Anduril recently delivered nearly 300 Altius drones to Taiwan.
Photograph: Getty ImagesThe company had capacity to make up to 50 Altius-600 drones a month in early 2024, two people say, but ended up producing and selling fewer than that on average. When a customer asked for design tweaks that would require different parts, like a newer communications radio, the components sometimes took months to arrive. As a relatively small buyer in the defense-industrial world, Anduril couldn’t jump the line or attract top suppliers. The company sourced some plastic parts from vendors that normally sold to toymakers making remote-controlled vehicles, two people say. The Altius team manually inspected or tested every individual system to catch concerns early.
By late 2024, the Atlanta operation had hundreds of workers, several people say. As the factory set about fulfilling its largest order to that point—an estimated $300 million deal to put together nearly 300 drones for Taiwan—Anduril brought reinforcements to the line, and assembly stations popped up in the Atlanta office’s every nook. The company elevated former Uber executive Burhan Muzaffar, based in California, to oversee the drone and, eventually, rocket motor businesses. People from both McHenry and Atlanta tell WIRED that the mood in the factories started to change. “It began a phase of it being difficult to provide management with negative feedback without fear of retaliation,” one person says and another confirms.
Muzaffar’s rallying cry in Atlanta was to “shake the tree,” a former employee says. Soon after his arrival, dozens of employees there, including several key engineering leaders, left the company, several people say. A former Atlanta employee says they began thinking of ways to quit and pay back their signing bonus. “The stress and pressure was intense, to the point I was getting sick,” they tell WIRED.
By early 2025, several people say, managers in Atlanta began directing employees to work longer hours. “Definitely comments would be made that you’re not putting in enough time,” a former employee says. Anduril executives have previously said employees stay into the night voluntarily because they are building life-or-death systems and that they are not tasked to work “insane hours.” Two workers in Atlanta allege that they felt pressure to mark 45 hours on their timesheet, whether or not they actually had that much work to do. “Just asking them to do work more doesn’t make them work more efficiently,” another person says. They add that they did not envy leadership’s job as it tried to pursue new business. The product itself, they say, is “a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none product"—which makes it appealing but challenging to produce. "It was a victim of its own success," the person says.
Pressure was rising in Morrisville, North Carolina, too, where Anduril makes the composite parts for Fury, an uncrewed fighter jet, and Dive-LD, a small unstaffed submarine, both in the prototype stage. (Final assembly of the Fury takes place at Anduril HQ in California for now, and Dive-LD at its new facility in Rhode Island.) Morrisville managers did away with four 10-hour days and began forcing five days a week in the factory and staying there longer. When temperatures rose, one factory employee allegedly complained about a lack of air-conditioning, a person says. The company responded by stocking Gatorades and popsicles and increasing its tolerance of breaks, the person adds. They and another person described particularly low morale at the Morrisville site last year compared to other Anduril locations. Anduril itself has acknowledged that “stress” at Morrisville was “astronomically high.”
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth recently gave a speech at Anduril's Rhode Island facility, where its Dive-LD autonomous submarine (pictured here at company headquarters) is assembled.
Photograph: Getty ImagesIn McHenry, there was a lot to be worried about as 2025 arrived. As samples shipped and Anduril learned more about the business, it projected profit margins of 3 percent or so annually—a tenth of what it had initially expected to achieve, two people say. As the year went on, the rocket motor team felt increased scrutiny from HQ over rising costs and sluggish results.
The confusion of long hours, miscommunications, and the rush to meet deadlines coincided with other issues, several people allege. A door made from 30,000 pounds of lead bricks and meant to shield x-rays began digging up the uneven concrete floor and had to be redone. Crews also found a radiation leak from the x-ray room’s roof. In other incidents, a robotic sprayer was built to the wrong specifications, and a booth for coating motors turned out to be wholly unnecessary. Later, Anduril suddenly paused on seeking a permit to burn explosive waste so it could rework plans, frustrating environmental regulators already accustomed to the startup’s “history of delays,” as a state official wrote to a federal counterpart in an email obtained by WIRED.
Soon after the test engineer burned his hand about a year ago, investigators told employees that schedule pressures may have contributed to the incident, three people familiar with the findings say, though one disputes it was a significant cause. “Everyone has faults when they are trying something new,” the person says. “But you’re not going to get any better doing the same thing you’ve done for the past 50 years.”
Anduril followed up with safety improvements, including more fire-safe gloves. The worker returned after about six weeks, and photos on his Facebook show an apparently well-healed hand a year later. (The test engineer didn’t respond to a request for comment.)
Late last March, weeks after the igniter accident, manufacturing leaders got on a team call with Thurgood, the former Army officer who oversaw McHenry. They discussed a goal of finishing Roberto's first testable motor around August—just in time for Thurgood's birthday. But as Thurgood dug into plans with his team, holes became apparent, two people say. No time had been budgeted for getting machines going and ensuring consistent output. One person familiar with the status of the building said that a true mass production start looked more like March 2026.
One lesson on wrangling equipment arrived within months. A recently hired maintenance technician trying to clean out a fairly new machine disconnected a part before turning off power—a clear lapse in what should have been protocol, two people say. Aluminium powder blew onto people’s hair and coats. No one was hurt, but more significant inhalation could have caused breathing problems.
Not long after, another big moment turned sour. On July 1, construction crews handed over the keys to Roberto, the mass production hub for McHenry’s rocket motors. A handful of site leaders dined at Buffalo Wild Wings that night to mark the milestone, two people say. But there was some unease about the road ahead. Producing a solid rocket motor in Roberto would take 28 days, the two people say. But Anduril was due to have its first few inert—or nonexplosive—motors from Roberto just three days later.
The morning after the dinner, on July 2, the head of production was let go and escorted out of the McHenry complex, two people say. A senior manager on the same team resigned minutes after, leaving his phone and badge with the security officer.
Executives including Keith Flynn, a former Tesla manager who is Anduril’s senior vice president of manufacturing, brought in a new regime, but problems persisted. Late last July, machines from the supplier Coperion—meant to automate the process of dosing chemicals for the propellant—started oozing, several people say. When the emergency stop buttons didn’t work, an inert hardening chemical spread on the floor. No one was injured, but the machines were inoperable until safety and quality could be ensured.
Anduril and Coperion representatives met daily for weeks on sometimes heated Zoom calls to try to resolve the issues. Coperion had long cautioned that its machine hadn’t been used for that application, three people say. A former Anduril employee says they “don't know anybody who would want to use” that type of machine for “energetics,” referring to combustible chemicals. “I understand they make good dog food,” the person says. Coperion declined to comment for this story.
Anduril president and chief strategy officer Christian Brose has said the startup prioritizes products that can be reliably assembled in large volumes. But in Atlanta, three people say, components such as Altius’ wing would sometimes come out of assembly misaligned or malfunctioning because of complex designs. At least two workers say they chafed at the use of 3D printing and carbon fiber over conventional techniques and reliable materials. One person described the company’s “mentality” as “it knows better than its predecessors.”
In at least four separate military tests last year, Anduril systems, including two Altius drones, failed to perform as expected, according to reporting by the The Wall Street Journal and Reuters. At the time, executives said the point of testing was to identify issues: Anduril’s guiding philosophy has been to fail fast.
But some Atlanta workers offer mixed views on the company’s testing processes as of last year. For instance, pressure to constantly test Altius in a makeshift room at the factory, on a Georgia farm, and in the Chihuahuan Desert in Texas sometimes meant that data from the prior experiment hadn’t been processed by the time of the subsequent one, a former worker says. “You’ve got all these incredible engineers firing on all cylinders, and they're getting frustrated because they can’t even learn from the test or take a breath,” the person says.
Last August, Anduril sent its first batch of drones to Taiwan, which the company described as a fast turnaround made possible by assembling some of them before finalizing a contract. Luckey made the trek for the delivery. While there, he addressed students at National Taiwan University about how “mass-producible missiles” would thwart future Chinese aggression against their island. But at Anduril’s own plant for mass-producing missile motors, the company was keeping its challenges under wraps—literally.
Anduril's rocket motors are designed to eventually power a variant of the US Navy's Standard Missile, shown here being launched from a Taiwanese frigate during exercises in 2022.
Photograph: SAM YEH/Getty ImagesHours after Luckey’s speech, at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for McHenry’s Roberto building, Thurgood stood onstage alongside US senator Roger Wicker and other dignitaries. Black curtains hung beside the ceremony area, obscuring another scene entirely. Many tools and parts were still in crates. About half of the required equipment was in place and working. “We had no way of dispensing chemicals into the bucket to mix them,” a former employee says. “No way to make casts or manufacture and install nozzles or igniters for the motors. We had a grand dog and pony show.”
At the time, Anduril touted that it had test-fired more than 700 motors and had customers such as the US Army and defense contractor Saab. But all of the motors had come out of Geisler, the prototyping lab at McHenry where top engineers provided significant oversight to perfect them.
Notably, no California executives showed up for the McHenry ribbon cutting. Anduril cofounder and executive chairman Trae Stephens marked the occasion with an interview on CNBC, apparently from a studio in San Francisco. Workers stung. “Just makes you feel unimportant,” an employee in McHenry at the time says.
In the months after the ribbon-cutting, as President Trump issued an executive order renaming the Department of Defense the Department of War and Hegseth pledged to reverse what he called “decades of decay” in the military, the Pentagon’s support for Anduril deepened. On October 2, it awarded the company $43.7 million on top of an earlier grant to continue building out McHenry. The next day, Anduril missed a new deadline to deliver six inert motors, multiple people say. The first motor with full-on propellant in it was to be delivered in early 2026, but that wasn’t going to happen either. “Building a rocket motor is not the same as building a car,” a former employee says. “Tesla doesn’t kill everybody on the assembly line if it has a bad day.”
As the issues mounted, Anduril chief operating officer Matt Grimm visited McHenry. A former employee recalls that Grimm kept referring to “paranoia” about safety at the facility without specifying his concerns. But the underlying message was clear: Headquarters wanted Roberto to start humming and would provide whatever it took to get that done.
After scolding several leaders, one person says, Grimm expressed his displeasure with the chicken wings and left after lunch. (In a post on X while this story was being reported, Grimm said, “I don't recall eating wings, or anything specific about the alleged wings in question on this day at our rocket factory in Mississippi.”)
About that time, Anduril moved Thurgood to a special projects team, days before he was to speak to students at the school district’s Career and Technical Center. He bailed on the talk, and the preliminary discussions with the district have not materialized in an Anduril donation. Workers also learned that one of the Adranos cofounders and the chief inventor behind its experimental chemical formula would be going on extended leave.
A couple of weeks later, Muzaffar arrived for his first check of McHenry. He pointed out frustrations and warned of changes. A second management exodus followed in late 2025, several people say. The new head of production, months into the job, was among the cuts. “There’s no clear direction, and it’s difficult to steer the ship when you’re offing the captain,” says one ex-worker.
By the end of last year, staff at McHenry had yet to finalize standard operating procedures across the mass production line, two people say. Basic safety measures remained outstanding: Workers on the 470-acre campus communicated emergencies over Slack messages or phone calls, according to several people familiar with the issue, though thick blast walls made mobile service a no-go in Roberto. One of the people says a central alarm system was to be prioritized as soon as Roberto started working with explosive propellant. Employees had to first walk inside production facilities to get protective gear, several people say.
A goal of delivering inert motors for ground-launched bombs to Swedish aerospace company Saab by the end of this month was pushed back based on anticipated delays and changing specifications, two people say. Saab spokesperson Mattias Rådström says its partnership is progressing as planned.
Blasko, Anduril’s retired neighbor in McHenry, says noise from the facility is a common occurrence now. He compares it to a fighter jet roaring by for 20 seconds. Deer, turkeys, and the hunters chasing them have become rare sights on his 10 acres. He and his wife would consider leaving their home of 11 years if Anduril reaches its mass production goals. “We’ve lost our peace and quiet around here,” he says.
But Blasko need not start packing. More than seven months since the ribbon cutting, Anduril hasn’t announced any test fires of a motor produced in Roberto. It hasn’t said whether any of its own products, such as its Barracuda missile, will use McHenry motors from Roberto. This month, two chief engineers and a director for the rocket motor division updated their LinkedIn profiles to reflect that they were looking for new jobs. The state of the business has people “worried they made the wrong choice rolling the dice on this startup,” one person says. “I pray for people relocating to Ohio, Rhode Island, and everywhere else.”
Anthony Di Stasio, a former Pentagon official who oversaw a $14.3 million grant to the McHenry plant in the final days of the Biden administration, says he is not concerned or surprised. Construction, management, and supply chain issues were inevitable in his mind. He had calculated 2028 for mass production, disregarding the company’s public statements.
“Everyone says, ‘I can do everything right away,’ but they can’t,” Di Stasio says. “This is just normal growing pains of trying to rebuild manufacturing in the US. I warned them it was going to be three to five years before they were competitive.”
Still, “everything right away” seems to be what Anduril is aiming for in Ohio. It has already prepared initial hires for Fury, the uncrewed fighter jet for which it does not yet have a production contract. Luckey has pointed out that Fury went from prototype contract to test flight last October in 556 days, which he claims is faster than any fighter plane since the end of the Korean War. But General Atomics, Anduril's competitor for an Air Force contract to make the drones, held its test flight two months earlier. There’s no guarantee that Anduril will win Fury business. About half of Anduril’s product lines have won contracts for mass production, WIRED found based on press releases, media reports, and a person familiar with the deals.
The first of several production buildings in Ohio is opening up now, with plans to assemble Fury at a rate of up to 150 annually by the end of the year, along with Barracuda and Roadrunner missiles and another product that is classified, executives told reporters last week during a tour. (WIRED did not receive an invitation.) The size of the project and its accompanying taxpayer subsidy have fueled some protests. Activists worry about harm to water supplies and what they believe may be Native American ceremonial mounds. That doesn’t even get into housing shortages and increased traffic. But activist leaders say concerned locals—much like Blasko in McHenry—are resigned to the government ushering through the monumental undertaking no matter what.
An aerial view from March 2026 of Anduril's Arsenal-1 facility outside Columbus, Ohio.
Photograph: Doral Chenoweth/Reuters
Anduril expects annual assembly of as many as 150 Fury drones, pictured here at Arsenal-1 in March 2026, though it has yet to win a contract to produce them.
Photograph: Megan Jelinger/ReutersThat leaves a relatively clear path for Anduril, which has been making its name locally by sponsoring the Ohio State University athletics department for an undisclosed sum, speaking to high schoolers about roles at Arsenal-1, and surveying local trade colleges about potentially partnering. “Our goal is to plant the seeds early,” Anduril senior vice president of strategy Zachary Mears told a local journalist. “Imagine a fifth grader getting excited about designing and building the next generation of defense technology—that’s the future we want to create.”
If a deal gets done, Anduril would be potentially the biggest corporate partner ever for the Pickaway-Ross Career & Technology Center, which serves the equivalent of about 1,800 full-time students annually. Superintendent Jonathan Davis says he is prepared to modernize the curriculum and run more classes to train students for Anduril careers. Funding from the company for equipment and instructors would help. “It is definitely a hope and a desire, and something we've communicated,” Davis says.
John Berry, president of Central Ohio Technical College, says a recent meeting with six representatives from Anduril led to plans for them to sit in on engineering classes, propose changes, and hopefully contribute funding to add courses. The intention is to supply Anduril with hundreds of new production technicians each year.
Berry says he is approaching expansion cautiously. The chipmaker Intel had planned to bring about 3,000 jobs to the region before money troubles and shifting priorities delayed plans by five years to 2030 and beyond. While Berry says the Intel delay caused “psychological damage,” he has felt reassured by his interactions with Anduril. “They said, ‘We're not looking to get too far ahead of our skis. We want to make sure that what we are saying we will have, we will have,’” Berry says.
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