Deployment

Ghost is Anduril Industries' helicopter-style single-rotor autonomous VTOL small uncrewed aircraft for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, with the current Ghost-X variant redesigned on Ukrainian combat feedback from the Ghost 4 lineage launched in September 2020. It carries roughly a 20-to-25-pound payload over about 75 to 90 minutes and 25 kilometers, runs Anduril's Lattice autonomy software, and sits on the Defense Innovation Unit's China-free Blue UAS list. Its verified gating events are strong: in September 2024 it was selected for the US Army's Company-Level small-UAS Directed Requirement Tranche 1 alongside Performance Drone Works' C-100, under a $14.417 million ten-year indefinite-delivery contract, and it was chosen via the Army's Medium Range Reconnaissance program under Replicator for rapid fielding to Brigade Combat Teams, with thirteen Army units logging more than 1,200 unit-hours over the prior year and combat use in Ukraine since 2022, backed by a $1 billion Ohio manufacturing facility announced in January 2025. On AI substance the Lattice stack delivers genuine fielded onboard autonomy, including radio-silent flight, single-operator multi-drone teaming, and automatic mission hand-off on low battery, and Ghost is wired in the registry to the existing Lattice brain; note that Hivemind is Shield AI's autonomy stack, not Anduril's, so Ghost is not wired to it. Counter-evidence is kept rather than suppressed: a Ghost-X crashed in uncontrolled flight during January 2025 training in Germany and Bloomberg reported broader Anduril drone-crash setbacks in late 2025, real reliability friction that Anduril says it diagnosed and fixed. A reported roughly $17 million April 2026 contract, a 300-percent-effectiveness claim, and precise total fielded counts are recorded as claimed but not verified.

Ghost (Ghost-X) by Anduril Industries · Operated by United States Army · Catalog entry · 4 sources · not yet field-verified