Anduril and Archer Aviation have unveiled a jointly developed, dual-use VTOL aircraft platform at Farnborough, with Anduril showcasing the defense variant, named Thunder — a Group 5 autonomous attack rotorcraft intended to add mass to crewed attack and assault aircraft fleets rather than replace them outright.

Thunder is built on a series hybrid-electric powertrain paired with dual tiltrotors, combining vertical takeoff and landing with efficient wingborne cruise. The tiltrotors vary rotor RPM across flight regimes to cut power demand and fuel burn in cruise while reducing acoustic signature during low-altitude ingress — a survivability consideration as much as an efficiency one. The companies describe it as a clean-sheet design rather than a modification of Archer’s existing Midnight air-taxi airframe, though it draws directly on that program’s flight-test history in electric propulsion and rotor design.

Shane Arnott, Anduril’s SVP of Maneuver Dominance, framed the collaboration as pulling commercial eVTOL performance and producibility into a defense airframe. Archer required a clean-sheet approach rather than a modification of an existing airframe, said Adam Goldstein, Archer’s founder and CEO, calling the result “the most sophisticated vertical lift aircraft ever made.”

The companies have already flown full-scale surrogate aircraft to validate systems ahead of Thunder’s first flight, planned for 2027. Runway-independent basing from austere locations, without the range penalties typical of pure rotorcraft, is the operational pitch — positioning Thunder against the broader push toward attritable, autonomous rotorcraft that can multiply the reach of existing crewed fleets.