Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
Archer and Anduril Join Hybrid Defense Drone Chase
Autonomous Thunder aircraft unveiled on first day of Farnborough airshow
Anduril Archer Thunder
The Thunder autonomous platform is intended for military missions, including low-level attack. © Archer Aviation

Archer Aviation and autonomous system specialist Anduril rolled out their plans for a family of hybrid-electric VTOL aircraft on Monday. On the opening morning of the Farnborough International Airshow, the U.S. partners unveiled a mockup of a Group 5 model called Thunder, which they described as an autonomous attack rotorcraft.

The program joins similar initiatives from other eVTOL aircraft developers chasing the spike in defense spending on autonomous platforms to supplement piloted warplanes. These include rivals Joby Aviation, Vertical Aerospace, and Beta Technologies, which is exhibiting the MV250 hybrid-electric autonomous derivative of its CX300 electric aircraft.

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