Ukraine's Defense Forces may have received Bolt-M drones from American defense company Anduril at least they claimed that, in addition to the U.S. Marine Corps, they supplied these FPV drones to one more unnamed customer, and also that both American military and other participants in military conflicts were involved in its creation.
At the same time, an important nuance concerning this drone is that it remains an expensive weapons sample, and at Anduril they consciously took such a step, as Dan Layton, the company's general manager for precision strike systems, told The War Zone.
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Overall, the company refused to name the exact cost of the Bolt-M FPV drone, only noting that the unit cost is within tens of thousands of dollars. Having data that the U.S. Marine Corps ordered over 600 drones for $23.9 million, it can be calculated that the maximum price of the drone reaches $39,800 per one, which for an FPV drone is indeed a cosmic cost.
Ultimately, as the company emphasizes, the final cost of the Bolt-M FPV drone depends on the configuration chosen by the customer, payload, volumes, etc. However even at a cost of $20-30 thousand dollars, it still remains many times more expensive compared to, for example, those FPV drones used by Ukraine or russia, whose cost again depending on equipment, warhead, etc., can fluctuate at the level of $500-1,500.
At Anduril they say that the decision to create an expensive drone was made after searching for an answer to the question why not just go and buy a FPV and ultimately in Bolt-M they decided to implement a conceptually different idea to make essentially an ideal asset taking into account all the shortcomings of cheaper FPV drones.
Among such shortcomings, Anduril names unreliable communication that can be jammed by EW (however, they somewhat forget about fiber optics, which, although it has its operational nuances, provides operation in EW conditions for quite small costs). While Anduril offers a drone based on artificial intelligence elements, where a human is minimally necessary for its control.
From this follows the next advantage to effectively use Bolt-M, less time needs to be spent on operator training, and ultimately a significantly lower level of professionalism will be required from them to demonstrate the same level of target hitting as with a regular FPV drone.
Further, at Anduril they name as an advantage of Bolt-M its high level of resistance to the environment namely to maximum high and low temperatures.
Ultimately, the company is confident that taking into account all these factors, the Bolt-M FPV drone will have a significantly higher hit coefficient, which means that if, for example, to destroy one target it's necessary to use up to 10 regular FPV drones, then only one or two Bolt-M will be needed. However, this claim can really be verified only in practice in truly modern combat conditions.
Overall, as a conclusion, it can be noted that on one hand the concept voiced by Anduril has a right to exist, and on the other Bolt-M will still remain a drone for implementing specific tasks, while mass ones will still be significantly cheaper FPV drones.
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