Anduril and Qualcomm unveil rugged, US-made BlueChip laptop
Defense firm Anduril and chipmaker Qualcomm plan to build laptops in the U.S. for government and military users. Orders are expected in 2027, at a premium over Chinese-made machines.
Archive image · Photo: Stephen McCarthy / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0 (cropped and resized)
Defense technology company Anduril and chipmaker Qualcomm on Tuesday unveiled BlueChip, an initiative whose first product is a rugged laptop for government, military, first responder and public safety customers. Built to military standards for shock, vibration and harsh environments, it runs on Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Series platform, which also handles on-device artificial intelligence tasks. The prototypes have been tested with Windows and two Linux distributions popular with the military.
Circuit board assembly is planned at Anduril's Arsenal-1 facility in Ohio, and Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said the chips will be made at a TSMC plant in Arizona. By cost, more than 90% of the components now come from suppliers in the U.S. and allied countries, with a goal of 100%. Some parts, including the display panel, are currently made only in China.
Orders are expected to open in 2027; the companies did not disclose prices or production volumes. "In the near term, this is going to be more expensive than a laptop made in China," Anduril founder Palmer Luckey said, according to Bloomberg. He said there are no government subsidies or contracts so far and that the companies are funding development themselves. Amon pointed to AI, saying "computers are also becoming token machines."