ALTIUS-700

ALTIUS-700 is a tube-launched loitering munition developed by Anduril Industries , positioned as the larger, longer-ranged sibling to the company’s ALTIUS-600 family. The platform descends from work originally done at Area-I, the Georgia-based small-UAS specialist that Anduril acquired in 2021, and it entered the public catalogue around 2022 as the US Army began evaluating heavier organic strike options for brigade and division formations.

Mechanically, the system follows the same Agile-Launched Tactically Integrated Unmanned System lineage as the smaller ALTIUS-600: stowed in a sealed canister, ejected at low speed, then unfolding wing and tail surfaces in flight before the propulsion stage takes over. The 700 trades the 600’s compact form factor for substantially more endurance and a heavier warhead, slotting between hand-launched loitering munitions and full-size cruise systems. Onboard autonomy handles waypoint navigation and target hand-off, with electro-optical and infrared sensors feeding a man-in-the-loop control scheme that can be detached for terminal phases when communications are denied. The munition variant, marketed as ALTIUS-700M, carries a warhead sized against light armoured vehicles and softer high-value targets at stand-off ranges the smaller 600 cannot reach.

Operators publicly associated with the system are limited so far to the United States, where the Army has run the platform through a series of Project Convergence and related experimentation events. ALTIUS airframes more broadly have been demonstrated launched from ground vehicles and from rotary-wing aircraft, part of the service’s effort to give manoeuvre formations their own deep-strike option without leaning entirely on artillery or fixed-wing assets. The 700 has not been confirmed in combat use, and Anduril has not disclosed contract values or fielded quantities at a level of detail comparable to what is publicly available for the AeroVironment Switchblade family.

Development continues alongside the rest of the ALTIUS line, which Anduril has folded into its broader autonomous-air portfolio under the Lattice command-and-control software stack. Inside that portfolio the 700 sits between expendable scout drones such as the smaller ALTIUS variants and the company’s Barracuda cruise-missile family, offering a US-built tube-launched option in a category otherwise dominated by AeroVironment ’s Switchblade 600 and a growing bench of Israeli and Polish loitering munitions.