According to its developers, the base configuration Bolt is designed for man-packable intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and search and rescue, while the Bolt-M, which is the munition iteration of Bolt, arms ground forces with lethal precision firepower. Further, it leverages onboard software to automate the flight behaviors needed to track and strike a target accurately while presenting human operators with four decisions: where to look, what to follow, how to engage and when to strike.

Source: Anduril Industries

Additionally, Bolt-M offers autonomous waypoint navigation and target-agnostic object tracking, customizable standoff distances and engagement modalities, more than 40 minutes of endurance, and 20 km of range to extend the reach of dismounted forces.

Bolt-M, with its up to 3 lbs of munition payload capacity, can reportedly deliver devastating effects against static or moving ground-based targets, such as light vehicles, dismounted personnel, trenches and more.

Bolt-M is equipped with advanced onboard artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) software to automate the flight behaviors required for finding, tracking and striking dynamic targets.

Meanwhile, the VTOL offers target-agnostic object tracking so that an operator can draw a bounding box around any visual target for Bolt-M to follow, thus enabling warfighters to respond to new and previously unseen threats in real-time.

When a target is identified, an operator can specify a standoff position for Bolt-M to maintain, thus instructing the system to stalk the target from beyond the visual or acoustic detection range even as the target moves or is concealed.

Additionally, when it’s time to strike, an operator can identify the engagement angle to achieve the most effective strike while onboard vision and guidance algorithms maintain terminal guidance, even if connectivity is lost with the operator.

Its developers added that Bolt-M can be unpacked and airborne in under five minutes, thus offering on-demand precision firepower at a moment’s notice and Bolt can operate anywhere and easily launched in congested environments. Further, Bolt can stalk targets at extended ranges during both daytime and nighttime operations.