Embraer and the United States defence-technology firm Anduril Industries have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to integrate the pallet-launched Barracuda-500M stand-off cruise missile onto the C-390 Millennium airlifter.
The agreement, announced at the Farnborough International Airshow on 21 July, would hand the tactical transport its first offensive strike role.
Under the MoU, the two firms would load the Barracuda-500M – abbreviated B-500M – aboard the C-390 on pallets and release the rounds from the aircraft’s rear ramp using roll-on/roll-off mission systems and conventional aerial-delivery procedures.
A concept image shown at Embraer’s Farnborough briefing depicted 25 missile rounds arranged on a single pallet, one package loading while a second sat in the cargo hold.
Bosco da Costa Junior, president and chief executive of Embraer Defense & Security, described the effort as extending the aircraft toward “palletised, kinetic, and non-kinetic effects” beyond its established airlift work.
He told reporters the capability is aimed at the international market rather than the Brazilian Air Force, with demand arriving from several countries.
The move would carry the C-390 well beyond tactical airlift and into long-range precision strike, a role no operator has fielded on the type to date.
Da Costa said interest was coming from customers across Europe and Asia, though he declined to identify them and gave no date for a first test firing.
The Barracuda-500M belongs to Anduril’s Barracuda family of air vehicles, revealed in September 2024 in three size classes – the Barracuda-100, Barracuda-250 and Barracuda-500 – with the numeric suffix denoting weight class in pounds.
The cruise-missile variants carry an explosive warhead and a single small turbojet for a top speed near 930 km/h.
Anduril presents the B-500M, which holds the United States military designation AGM-189, as a low-cost, mass-producible cruise missile built to rebuild American and allied weapons stockpiles quickly.
The palletized configuration lets a transport aircraft employ dozens of munitions in a single pass, opening large-scale strike concepts at reduced cost.
Because the rounds leave the aircraft on standard cargo pallets rather than dedicated pylons, the method turns existing transports into stand-off launchers while keeping crews clear of defended airspace and removing any fighter-escort requirement.
The weapon traces to the United States Air Force Enterprise Test Vehicle (ETV) effort, run with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and now transitioning into the Franklin Affordable Mass Missile (FAMM) line.
Anduril first flew the pallet-launched round from a vertical cell in September 2024 and has run dozens of tests since, validating networked autonomy and terminal guidance through its Lattice software.
The design is built for both kinetic strike and non-kinetic payloads, and the pallet architecture is meant to scale as Anduril completes further flight tests under its United States supply contracts.
The concept echoes the United States Air Force’s Rapid Dragon experiments, which drop palletized cruise missiles from cargo aircraft.
Open-source analysis notes that a single C-17 Globemaster III could carry 16 to 24 Barracuda-500 rounds per sortie, against the 20 AGM-86 air-launched cruise missiles a B-52H bomber carries.
The Embraer deal broadens the missile’s reach beyond recent United States Department of Defense supply contracts and a local-production arrangement with Poland’s Polska Grupa Zbrojeniowa (PGZ).
The United States Army has separately moved to buy thousands of container-launched rounds.
Embraer is not alone in eyeing airlifters as missile carriers: Airbus is studying a comparable palletized role for its A400M transport.
Among C-390 operators, South Korea – due to receive three of the type and facing North Korea’s conventional arsenal – stands out as an early candidate for the strike role.
The pairing of a low-cost cruise missile with a scalable, pallet-based launcher is the latest expression of the ‘affordable mass’ approach now spreading across Western arsenals. It trades small numbers of exquisite, costly weapons for cheap rounds fired in saturating salvos.
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