Anduril Industries on Monday said it has received an $18.6 million contract from the Navy to build five of its Dive autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) for a prototyping effort and the company also announced it will open a production facility in Rhode Island in 2025 to scale up manufacturing of its Dive-LD family of unmanned underwater vessels (UUVs).
The prototype production contract follows initial awards the Navy and the Defense Departments Innovation Unit (DIU) made to Anduril, Kongsberg Discovery
, and Oceaneering International [OII] in February to prototype their respective UUVs (Defense Daily, Feb. 8). The initial large displacement UUV awards were for four months. The DIU said at the time that each award contained options to extend the period of performance to two years.
A spokeswoman for Oceaneering told Defense Daily that her company is “completing Phase 1 contract options this month in Stavanger, Norway, and are the process of negotiating Phase 2 contract options.”
The three-ton Dive LD AUV is made for littoral and deep-water survey, inspection, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and can be rapidly reconfigurable to meet specific mission needs, Anduril says on its website. The vessel, which is 19-feet long and four-feet in diameter, has a 313 nautical mile survey range and a speed range of two to seven knots.
With the new contract, Anduril is investing in a large-scale manufacturing facility for the Dive-LD family in Quonset Point, R.I., that the company said will enable production of more than 200 hulls annually beginning in 2026. The 100,000 to 150,000 square foot facility is slated to open during the fourth quarter of 2025.
“Over the last six months, the U.S. Navy, in partnership with DIU and Congress, has driven an aggressive program timeline to put vendors on contract, acquire capabilities, and rapidly demonstrate those capabilities with warfighters,” Nick Stoner, director at Anduril, said in a statement. “This contract is a fantastic example of how the U.S. Navy can incentivize industry to make capital investments and product the kinds of undersea asymmetric advantages our Fleet Commanders need, on the timelines they need them.”
Anduril did not disclose the value of its investment in the Rhode Island facility. The Providence Journal on June 13 reported that the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation, a quasi-public economic development organization, approved $5.4 million in tax incentives for the project.
Anduril expects to create more than 100 jobs at the new facility within five years of opening. The Rhode Island facility will be able to support the lifecycle of the Dive hull, from research and development through sustainment, the company said. Currently, DIVE-LD work is done at the company’s facility in Quincy, Mass., which will remain an engineering center for the AUV work after production transitions to Rhode Island.
General Dynamics’ [GD] Electric Boat division does some of its submarine manufacturing work in Quonset Point.
In addition to its AUV work with the Navy, Anduril is working with the Royal Australian Navy on an extra-large (XL) AUV prototype called Ghost Shark (Defense Daily, April 18). Work on the stealthy, long-range XL-AUV is part of the Australian government’s development of a sovereign autonomous undersea capability.
The investment in Dive-LD production follows an announcement by Anduril last week that it is investing $75 million in Mississippi to increase and modernize production of solid rocket motors (Defense Daily, June 10).