Anduril set out to remake how military gear is designed and built. Investors poured in billions. The company shipped prototype drones, towers, missiles, and small submarines. But behind the headlines, production sites from Mississippi to Atlanta have faced safety problems, missed schedules, and management churn. That story shows a deep tension between moving fast and getting manufacturing right.

The setup: startup speed, old-fashioned risk

Anduril, founded in 2017, has pitched itself as a faster, more software-savvy alternative to legacy defense contractors. Venture capital has supported the gamble to build hardware before every customer signs on. The company has raised large sums and spends heavily on research and development while planning factories and test sites across the United States and abroad.

WIRED spoke with 37 current and former employees and contractors, more than 20 of whom worked directly on production lines, and found recurring themes: tight deadlines, changing priorities, and points where safety and engineering controls lagged behind the push to scale. An Anduril spokesperson said the reporting relied heavily on former employees and declined to respond to detailed questions about the incidents described.

McHenry, Mississippi: the rocket motor gamble

Anduril acquired a small company that had developed a new lithium-laced propellant and set up operations at a former plant near the Gulf Coast. The goal was to make propellant and motors faster by concentrating many steps in a single building, a facility called Roberto. That consolidation promised speed but raised obvious safety and reliability questions.

  • About a year ago an engineer assembling an electrical igniter suffered burns when a device flashed unexpectedly. The worker had gloves not rated for fire protection and the team had not completed a formal job safety analysis for that task. The company later introduced more fire-safe gloves and other fixes.
  • Construction and equipment problems piled up. A heavy lead door meant to shield x-rays had to be rebuilt after damaging the floor. Crews discovered a roof leak that caused a radiation issue in an x-ray area. A robotic sprayer was built to the wrong specifications. A booth for coating motors proved unnecessary.
  • When Roberto was formally handed over to the site team, roughly half the required equipment was not yet working. The timeline for producing a finished rocket motor did not match the dates public officials were celebrating, and production leaders were quickly replaced.
  • Machines from a chemical-dosing supplier began leaking. Emergency stops failed in at least one incident. Teams from Anduril and the supplier spent weeks troubleshooting on calls that were sometimes heated.

Those problems affected schedule targets and deliveries. Federal funding and grants have supported the project, but planned deliveries of inert motors and the first full propellant motors slipped. Some leaders and engineers later left the company, and others updated their profiles to show they were open to new roles.

Atlanta: Altius drones, supplier headaches, and long hours

The Atlanta site, taken on in 2021, was set up to produce Altius drones. The operation had capacity for a certain monthly output but routinely produced fewer units, in part because some key parts were slow to arrive. Anduril sometimes had to source components from unusual vendors and manually inspected each system to catch issues.

Leadership changes followed as the company tried to increase output. One executive was said to urge staff to "shake the tree" and drive performance. Workers reported rising pressure, more time spent at the factory, and a culture where giving management negative feedback felt risky. Several engineers and managers left amid the changes.

Anduril has framed testing as a rapid way to surface problems. But employees described a cadence of constant testing that left little time to analyze results and improve designs between trials. That hampered learning and added frustration among engineers.

Morrisville: prototypes under stress

At a North Carolina site, teams built composite parts for an uncrewed fighter called Fury and for a small unmanned submarine. Managers shifted schedules to five-day weeks and longer shifts. Workers complained about heat and low morale. Company statements later acknowledged that stress at the site had been high.

The public theatre and private reality

Anduril has finished public deliveries and demonstrations. Executives traveled overseas to deliver drones to partners, and the company has promoted fast turnarounds. But some ribbon-cutting events masked unfinished work. At one ceremony, black curtains hid equipment still in crates and missing capabilities, while officials and local dignitaries celebrated the new building.

At the same time, the Pentagon increased support for faster, cheaper production of munitions. That backdrop helps explain why Anduril is pushing hard to scale up despite the setbacks.

Ohio and expansion: Arsenal-1 and the recruiting push

Anduril is building a large multipurpose factory near Columbus, Ohio, called Arsenal-1, with plans to hire thousands of workers over time and to assemble multiple product lines. State and local incentives helped the company proceed, and Anduril has been recruiting through school partnerships and trade colleges.

Local officials and educators are organizing classes and training programs to provide technicians. Community groups and activists have raised concerns about environmental impact, cultural sites, housing, and traffic. Some local leaders say they will proceed cautiously, noting past examples of promised jobs taking longer to appear than expected.

A realistic timeline

Former Pentagon officials and industry observers say rebuilding manufacturing for energetics and missiles is hard work that can take years. Some warn that expectations for immediate mass production are optimistic and that three to five years is a more realistic window for reaching steady output.

Culture, safety, and what comes next

Workers at multiple Anduril sites described perks like free insurance and catered lunches, and community benefits like local spending on retail and food. Yet they also described unclear standard operating procedures, missing emergency communications, and situations where teams used messaging apps to raise urgent safety concerns because other systems were not yet in place.

Company leaders repeatedly shuffled management, sometimes removing production heads quickly after problems surfaced. Executives have emphasized the need to get production lines running and to meet demand, but those same demands created friction with engineers and production staff trying to stabilize processes and ensure safety.

Anduril has already delivered several products and won mass production contracts for about half its lines. But other lines are still in prototype or early factory stages, and some scheduled deliveries and milestones remain delayed. The question for the company is whether it can translate speed and venture funding into repeatable and safe manufacturing at scale.

Bottom line: Anduril is pushing to change how weapons are made, and it has the cash and political support to try. The company also faces the messy reality of building complex, hazardous hardware. Fixes are coming, staff turnover continues, and timelines have slipped. How quickly Anduril turns prototypes into reliable production at scale will determine whether its factory problems become a temporary chapter or an ongoing obstacle.