Anduril has become the model for a faster, software-driven type of defense contractor. Last Friday, one of its rocket engines exploded at a test site in Mississippi. The explosion is a minor setback that sends an exaggerated message about how hard it really is to build rockets .
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A solid rocket motor exploded during a test firing at Anduril's McHenry, Mississippi, plant, the company confirmed. It did so only after WIRED, which first reported the incident, requested information. No one was injured. Safety systems worked as designed, and most damage was contained to the test site.
CEO Matt Grimm chose honesty. In a post on X with photos of burned equipment, he presented the explosion as routine. Each test failure, he argued, provides data that makes the next design more robust. Anduril will be “back to test firing missiles within weeks,” he wrote, and the production facility “remains on schedule.”
Not everyone calls it routine. Three people familiar with the work told WIRED that they couldn’t recall another test that ended in an explosion in recent years. No one knew the cause, an uncertainty reminiscent of the failure of Blue Origin’s New Glenn. The explosion also halted a step that brings in money for Anduril’s rocket unit. Rebuilding the base could take up to two months, one source said, longer than the weeks Grimm promised.
That revenue matters. Before it can mass-produce engines, Anduril makes money by building and testing prototype engines for clients like the U.S. Navy. That work brought in tens of millions of dollars last year, one person said. With the test bed out of commission, some of that is now on hold.
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Grimm said the plant is on track. WIRED’s sources disagree. Anduril had planned to begin mass production of rocket engines on July 1, 2025. A year later, four people said, it hasn’t.
The company got into the business in 2023 by buying a startup called Adranos, which built the McHenry location. That location has a tumultuous history, including a fire in 2021 that melted an aluminum wall.
Anduril has heard these comments before and is reacting strongly. After a WIRED investigation in March that detailed safety and equipment issues, founder Palmer Luckey dismissed some of them as “whining about…silly things.” President Trae Stephens said the company “scales faster than anyone in this industry” and “fixes problems as we find them.”
The stakes are national. Solid rocket motors are the propulsion inside most missiles, and U.S. production is limited to just a few companies. That bottleneck has left the Pentagon with a shortage of munitions, so it is funding startups like Anduril to fix it. An explosion doesn’t change that equation. But it is a reminder that the call for quick action meets the hard physics of the test bed.
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Anduril, which was last valued at $61 billion and is backed by companies like Founders Fund, can absorb the blow. The open question is whether the mindset that suits drones and cruise missiles translates to propellant chemistry, where mistakes come as fireworks. The same bet is being made in Europe, where Stark Defense and its competitors are racing to arm the continent. For all of them, Grimm’s signature fits: forward.
