Anduril Copperhead

An American family of compact autonomous underwater vehicles and expendable armed variants designed for deployment from larger uncrewed undersea platforms.

Overview

Anduril Copperhead is a family of high-speed autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) that includes surveillance-oriented vehicles and expendable "M" munition variants. Anduril publicly introduced the family in April 2025 as part of its broader Seapower undersea architecture, alongside the company's Dive-LD and Dive-XL autonomous submarines, Lattice command-and-control software and Seabed Sentry distributed sensors.

Copperhead is intended to be carried and deployed by a larger uncrewed underwater vehicle rather than launched directly from a crewed submarine or surface combatant. This arrangement is designed to separate the delivery platform from the final sensing or strike task: a Dive-class vehicle transports multiple Copperheads toward an operating area, while the smaller vehicles perform missions closer to a target or point of interest. Armed Copperhead-M variants have consequently been described as torpedo-like underwater one-way attack vehicles, although Anduril presents the family as a modular autonomous system rather than a conventional torpedo.

The concept seeks to reduce dependence on scarce crewed submarines and their comparatively expensive weapons. Its operational value nevertheless remains unproven. Copperhead has no documented combat record, no publicly confirmed production operator and no disclosed figures for range, speed, endurance, depth, payload or unit cost.

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