Pentagon tech hub hires Anduril to get large underwater drone to Navy

The Protection Innovation Unit awarded Anduril Industries a contract that may get its Dive household of large-diameter autonomous underwater autos into the arms of sailors for operations this yr.

The award comes after DIU chosen the Dive-LD platform to carry out in a “swim-off” final yr that put commercially accessible giant unmanned underwater autos by way of an impediment course to evaluate their maturity and applicability to conduct “distributed, long-range, persistent underwater sensing and payload supply in contested setting,” in response to a Feb. 8 Anduril information launch.

DIU is the Pentagon’s business innovation hub.

Anduril mentioned the U.S. Navy chosen it for a follow-on contract that enables operational models to borrow the unmanned autos for experiments or purchase them as a routine instrument for his or her missions. The corporate couldn’t disclose details about the worth or period of the contract, which was awarded by way of DIU’s Business Options Opening course of.

Anduril’s chief technique officer, Chris Brose, instructed Protection Information the corporate had labored on maturing and demonstrating the Dive-LD automobile for the final two years, however the contract now supplies a mechanism to get the drone into the arms of sailors throughout various geographies and unit sorts to allow them to “begin fixing lots of completely different issues throughout the seabed and undersea area.”

The contract creates direct entry between Anduril and operators. A unit that has by no means labored with an autonomous underwater automobile might need to experiment with one for a pair weeks or months, whereas one other unit with a extra refined idea for a way they’d use the Dive-LD automobile might need to purchase a number of proper off the bat.

Brose mentioned the contract permits for regardless of the operators desire, in addition to payload integration and different engineering to get the models a tailored system to satisfy their particular wants.

The Navy has struggled to deliver giant unmanned underwater autos to the fleet.

It kicked off a Snakehead large-diameter unmanned underwater automobile program in 2017, although the unique analysis program dates to earlier than 2015. The primary Snakehead prototype wasn’t christened till 2022, and the Navy and Congress agreed to cancel this system later that yr. Nevertheless, it’s been considerably resurrected as a market analysis effort to determine commercially accessible know-how that may very well be helpful to the fleet.

The Navy additionally pursued an Orca extra-large UUV program, first deciding on Boeing as one in every of two firms for a 2017 design contract after which deciding on the agency as the only winner of a 2019 contract to construct 4 prototypes. This system has seen developmental and manufacturing delays. The corporate in December delivered a pre-prototype take a look at asset however has not but accomplished and delivered any of the prototypes on contract.

Brose mentioned the Dive-LD — which Anduril acquired in early 2022 when it purchased Dive Applied sciences ­— was designed for manufacturability, payload integration and synthetic intelligence-powered good operations.

The automobile is made utilizing superior manufacturing processes, and the outer shell is 3D printed. Brose mentioned this implies the corporate can scale up manufacturing to satisfy demand below this DIU contract and others that will observe.

He referred to this DIU effort as a “breakthrough alternative” that’s led to Anduril “actually starting to take a position and facilitize for larger-scale manufacturing, which is one thing we’re doing in different components of the enterprise.”

He couldn’t speculate what number of Dive-LD autos the corporate may construct for Protection Division clients below this DIU contract, however he referred to as it “a extremely important subsequent step” for the corporate.

Due to the superior manufacturing processes, Anduril can simply redesign items of the modular unmanned automobile to accommodate a payload, reshape or resize the entire automobile to suit a sure want, and extra, primarily based on what clients need.

“I believe the thrill for us is the power to actually begin doing the issues at scale that the automobile was designed to do,” he mentioned.

Along with this contract with DIU, Anduril signed a three-year settlement with Australia in 2022 to create one thing akin to an Orca XLUUV. The corporate, the Royal Australian Navy, and the Australian authorities’s Defence Science and Expertise Group — in a $100 million co-funding effort — will design, develop and manufacture the extra-large autonomous undersea autos.