Palmer Luckey says the coolest thing about Anduril expanding to Long Beach is the fighter jets

Defense tech institution Anduril connected Thursday announced its plans to grow its Southern California beingness with a large field successful Long Beach, the coastal municipality wherever laminitis Palmer Luckey grew up.

The expanded field volition yet enactment astir 5,500 jobs. Luckey told TechCrunch that these volition beryllium caller jobs, not transfers from different operations.

Anduril’s office is nearby, successful Costa Mesa, California, and it besides has a monolithic manufacturing installation successful Ohio. The Long Beach field volition span 1.18 cardinal quadrate feet crossed six buildings, combining bureau abstraction and concern areas dedicated to R&D. It is expected to beryllium acceptable by mid-2027, the institution said.

Long Beach is “a large aerospace hub close successful our backmost yard,” Luckey told TechCrunch astir wherefore the institution chose that location.

The program is to prosecute akin types of employees to those moving astatine headquarters: manufacturing workers, technicians, assembly workers, and engineers crossed disciplines (electrical, mechanical, aerodynamics), arsenic good arsenic physique and trial roles, and “a batch of radical connected the logistics side, due to the fact that the things that we’re going to beryllium making there, we’re going to beryllium sending each implicit the world,” helium said.

While bringing thousands of jobs to his puerility municipality made headlines today, Luckey said the astir breathtaking portion for him was the combatant jets.

“It looks similar we’re going to beryllium capable to manufacture autonomous combatant jets that volition instrumentality disconnected close from the mill and alert to wherever the lawsuit needs them,” helium said. “We mightiness person jets leaving the factory, flying straight into combat. And I deliberation that that is highly cool.”

Anduril makes autonomous subject drones and craft for land, aerial and sea. In 2025, it unveiled a combatant jet called Fury, designed to alert autonomously, meaning it operates utilizing AI alternatively than being piloted remotely by a quality operator. The AI executes formation plans acceptable by humans. The Fury completed its first trial formation successful California connected October 31.