Anduril’s Dive-XL (Anduril)
COSTA MESA, Calif. — Anduril is putting a new autonomous submarine known as Dive-XL through endurance runs off the coast of California, as it seeks to tap into what company executives tell Breaking Defense they see as a growing commitment from the Pentagon to use unmanned underwater vehicles.
The first test vehicle — a non-missionized version of the Ghost Shark robotic submarine in development for the Royal Australian Navy — recently wrapped up a voyage where it spent 100 hours underway, a precursor to an upcoming demonstration where the Dive-XL will complete a mission in excess of 1,000 nautical miles while fully submerged.
“That’s in the coming months — weeks, if you will. And that’ll be the longest that we believe anyone’s really done,” Shane Arnott, Anduril’s senior vice president for programs and engineering, said during an interview at the company’s headquarters in Costa Mesa, Calif.
So far, the tests around the California coast has allowed Anduril to pick up valuable data that will allow it to optimize Dive XL to operate in diverse undersea environments, where undersea terrain and water salinity could have an impact on performance, Arnott said.
“The coast here is kind of like the Grand Canyon of subsea,” he said. “It is wild off California. Some of the terrain, it’s like Star Wars.”
Dive-XL is conceived as a modular uncrewed undersea vehicle (UUV) that can be purchased by both government and commercial customers and outfitted with payloads to serve various missions, whether that’s inspecting offshore oil rigs for energy companies or helping potential military users hunt down enemy submarines. A few sections of the vehicle are standard no matter the customer, including a nose section packed with avionics and sensing equipment that allows for autonomous movement, a tail containing the drive propulsor and a mast on top with communications gear such as acoustic and radio frequency systems.
The middle portion of the vehicle, however, can be customized by the customer to house whatever payload they need, and can be configured either as a single extra-large container or up to three smaller ones.
The smallest version of the Dive-XL can be housed in a 40 foot shipping container, which allows for it to be transported on roads or via a C-17 cargo plane, Arnott said. From there, it can be made bigger by adding additional payload compartments that stretch the size of the vessel, which Arnott said can be bolted on in a matter of hours.
Anduril self-funded the construction of the first Dive-XL, as well as the ongoing demonstrations, due to growing confidence in a US market for the drone, including with the US Navy as a potential customer, executives said.
“We literally had to go to Australia to find an excited customer in 2022 who wanted to do this work,” said Anduril Chief Strategy Officer Chris Brose in an interview on the sidelines of Reagan National Defense Forum on Saturday. “At the time, the belief was that the United States was not that partner yet, but if we showed them a different way to do this, you know, they might be a partner in the near future.”
Although the Navy has shown interest in underwater drones for years through programs like the canceled Snakehead large displacement UUV, industry has struggled to build affordable vehicles capable of autonomously performing missions while withstanding the harsh deep sea environment, leaving some of those efforts to wither on the vine, Brose said.
“They haven’t generated a lot of systems that sailors can take out on and under the water and really begin to operate and start to understand capabilities and limitations, experiment with new ways of using them [and] beginning to build out how would we man units to operate these systems,” he said.
One opportunity to break into the US market could arrive through a provision in the newly-released National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2025, which requires the Navy to conduct a competitive demonstration of extra large and large UUVs. The bill is set to be taken up by the House this week.
“I think that people are starting to realize that these technologies are available and I think that what we have been able to do with the Australian navy has begun to make believers,” Brose said, adding that the Navy will likely need a mix of capabilities to meet the threat.
“We’re not trying to get the Navy or US government or anybody to pick us as the sole winner always and forever,” he said. “We would like to be part of the winner’s circle.”
One extra-large UUV already in the hands of the Navy is Boeing’s Orca, which was delivered to the service last year. Lessons learned from testing that prototype will inform the development and build of five additional Orca production vehicles, the service said in December 2023. The construction of the first unit, known as XLE-1, is complete, and it is expected to be delivered in early 2025, the service said this month.
“Orca, and other platforms like her, are an important step forward as we drive towards our future hybrid fleet, which is going be composed of manned and unmanned platforms,” Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti said in a statement after touring Boeing’s Orca manufacturing facility in Long Beach, Calif., on Dec. 6.
Cost could be a deciding factor for whether the Dive XL finds a home with the Navy, as questions about price continue to dog unmanned programs. Arnott declined to give specifics on the price point for the Dive XL but said it would be available for a fraction of the price of other extra-large UUVs under development.
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“Other companies building XLs are taking a different approach than us that are perhaps a bit more exotic in the capabilities. … They’re fundamentally much, much more expensive. A lot of it came down to the philosophy,” he said. “The problem is about numbers. … If we’re going to be effective as the West against what China’s doing, we need this many, and it’s a lot.”
One advantage to the Dive XL’s design is that it is electric powered, which means that it does not need to surface to allow a diesel engine to “breathe” and get the air necessary to function, Arnott said. It’s also “free-flooded with all the electronics housed in protective containers — meaning water can freely flow inside the vessel, as opposed to having pressurized compartments — which helps drive down cost and complexity, he said.
Anduril is establishing a 100,000 square foot manufacturing plant in Quonset Point, R.I., that would take on commercial and US government orders and produce up to “dozens” of Dive XLs annually, the company said in a news release.
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Meanwhile, work also continues at a separate facility in Australia on the Australian navy’s Ghost Shark vehicles. The second of three Ghost Sharks ordered as part of the research and development program is currently under production, Arnott said.
