Anduril Ghost Shark

An extra-large autonomous underwater vehicle co-developed by Anduril and the Royal Australian Navy — a stealthy, modular platform for persistent ISR, strike, and payload delivery, built for mass production and distributed operations across the Indo-Pacific.

Overview

The Anduril Ghost Shark is an extra-large autonomous underwater vehicle (XL-AUV) designed and built in Australia through a co-development partnership between Anduril, the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), and the Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG). The system is engineered as a modular, free-flooding “mothership” that can carry sensors, effectors, and smaller uncrewed vehicles for long-endurance intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and strike missions. Its first prototype was unveiled in April 2024, and by early 2026 the vehicle had transitioned from a three-year prototyping sprint into a A$1.7 billion Program of Record for the RAN, with production ramping at Anduril’s purpose-built robotic factory in Sydney.

Development

Before any government contract was signed, Anduril acquired Boston-based AUV startup Dive Technologies in early 2022 to gain the Dive-LD line as a technical baseline. In May 2022 Australia and Anduril inked a three-year, three-prototype co-funded development agreement, embedding RAN personnel inside the company’s engineering processes, as The War Zone has detailed. The first prototype, “Alpha,” was unveiled in Sydney in April 2024 with sea trials already in progress, and all three prototypes were delivered ahead of schedule and on budget by 2025. On 10 September 2025 the Australian government converted the development partnership into a A$1.7 billion five-year Program of Record, and just seven weeks later the Sydney factory opened with the first production vehicle already off the line — ahead of schedule — and undergoing in-water acceptance testing in the factory’s custom test tank, according to Anduril.

Design & capabilities

Ghost Shark’s hull is a free-flooding structure with no pressure hull, using sealed waterproof zones for propulsion, navigation, and payloads. This approach slashes weight and cost, eliminates depth-limiting structural constraints (the commercial Dive-XL sibling is rated to ~6,000 m, according to external estimates), and allows rapid reconfiguration of modular payload sections, per The War Zone. The vehicle is powered by an all-electric powertrain and runs the Anduril Lattice autonomy software, which handles navigation, mission execution, and decision-making during long periods without communications, according to Anduril's Dive-XL documentation.

Payloads are carried in standardized, expandable bay modules with integrated power and data. The Dive-XL baseline advertises an internal payload volume of approximately 11.4 m³, spread across up to three modules or one extra-large module, and more than a dozen new payload options were under discussion as of 2024. The RAN requirement set includes “strike” payloads, though no weapon integration has been publicly demonstrated; analysts point to torpedoes, mines, loitering munitions, or other undersea effectors as plausible fits for the bay architecture, per Naval News. Ghost Shark is designed for launch and recovery from a wharf or from a warship deck, and it fits a standard 40-ft shipping container, making it C-17 air-transportable — a vehicle was flown to Hawaii for RIMPAC 2024, according to Wikipedia.

Variants

• Ghost Shark prototypes Alpha, Bravo, Charlie: Differed in forward dive-plane configurations during the co-development phase; used to refine the production configuration for the RAN.
• Ghost Shark production configuration: The current RAN operational standard, built on the Sydney line.
• Dive-XL: The commercial/US baseline sibling, built on the same production line and selected by the US Navy and DIU for the Combat Autonomous Maritime Platform (CAMP) prototype in March 2026.
• Dive-LD: The smaller predecessor AUV from Dive Technologies, which formed the technological starting point.

Combat record / operational use

Ghost Shark has no combat record. Its operational milestones began with trials already underway before the April 2024 unveiling, followed by a deployment to the US-led RIMPAC 2024 exercise in Hawaii, where it was used to open US-based testing and validate C-17 transportability. A fourth, company-funded vehicle remained in the United States for payload integration work, while the RAN prototypes continued sea acceptance trials. In January 2026 the first operational Ghost Shark was delivered to the RAN, and on 14 April 2026 the Navy formally stood up the Maritime Autonomous Systems Unit (MASU) under Project SEA 1200, with a mandate to write the doctrine for fighting with XL-AUVs and to control the fleet “from any wharf location anywhere in the world,” per Defence Blog. MASU also serves as Australia’s focal point for AUKUS Pillar 2 autonomous-systems experimentation.

Advantages

• Unmatched speed to fleet: From concept to Program of Record in about three years, with all prototypes delivered early and on budget — explicitly contrasted with decade-long conventional submarine programs.
• Mass-production mindset: No exotic materials; built on a robotic Sydney line shared with the commercial Dive-XL, allowing “dozens” of hulls to be produced over five years.
• Extreme modularity: Free-flooding architecture enables rapid reconfiguration of payload sections, from ISR suites to strike effectors to smaller AUVs, with “unlimited flexibility” in payload orientation per Anduril.
• Low logistics footprint: Container-transportable and C-17-air-liftable; can be launched from a wharf or a warship, supporting distributed Indo-Pacific operations without dedicated shore infrastructure.
• Sovereign industry base: Over 40 Australian supply-chain companies feeding the Sydney facility, with ~270 direct jobs and ~600 supplier jobs expected; the line can also serve allied export orders pending Canberra’s approval.

Drawbacks / limitations

• Performance data is largely classified: Nearly all key metrics — range, endurance, speed, depth rating, sensor suites, and weapon types — remain unpublished or are company-held figures; capability claims rest heavily on Anduril and the Australian government.
• Unproven operational concept: Launch-and-recovery procedures in contested environments, and the broader doctrine for fighting with XL-AUVs, are still being written — MASU’s explicit founding mandate.
• “Strike” capability un-demonstrated: A strike role is a stated requirement, but no weapon integration or live-fire event has been publicly shown.
• Endurance constrained by all-electric propulsion: The demonstrated submerged endurance of the Dive-XL sibling is 100 hours over a 10-day period — modest compared to multi-week patrols of crewed submarines.
• Communications gap: Submerged autonomy requires surface relay nodes (e.g., Bluebottle USVs) for data exfiltration, introducing system dependencies that a peer adversary could target.

Counterparts

• Sea Baby (Ukraine) — small, surface-oriented one-way USV; a different class of uncrewed maritime system.
• Magura V5 (Ukraine) — multi-role uncrewed surface vessel; represents a surface-strike analogue rather than the deep-submergence XL-AUV category.

Outlook

Production at the Sydney facility is ramping from low-rate to high-rate through 2026, with “dozens” of vehicles slated to enter RAN service over the five-year Program of Record and mission payloads maturing inside the same contract. The US market is the next horizon: the Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) and the US Navy selected Dive-XL in March 2026 for the CAMP program, with a long-duration demonstration due within four months — positioning the Ghost Shark/Dive-XL family as a lower-cost rival to Boeing’s Orca XLUUV, per Military Times. Export production for allied navies from the Sydney line is on the table pending Australian government approval, and the program sits inside Canberra’s announcement of a >A$10 billion national investment in autonomous systems, per the Australian Department of Defence.

Key specifications

Sources

1. Anduril Industries — Ghost Shark Enters Program of Record — From Prototype to Fleet in Three Years. https://www.anduril.com/news/ghost-shark-enters-program-of-record-from-prototype-to-fleet-in-three-years
2. Naval News — Anduril Ghost Shark Becomes A$1.7BN Australian Defence Program Of Record. https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2025/09/anduril-ghost-shark-now-australian-1-7-bn-program-of-record/
3. Breaking Defense — First Ghost Shark Extra Large AUV delivered to Australian navy. https://breakingdefense.com/2025/11/first-ghost-shark-extra-large-auv-delivered-to-australian-navy/
4. Australian Department of Defence — Anduril Sydney Production Facility Opening. https://www.minister.defence.gov.au/speeches/2025-10-31/anduril-sydney-production-facility-opening
5. Wikipedia — Ghost Shark (submarine). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Shark_%28submarine%29
6. The War Zone — Everything We Just Learned About The Ghost Shark Uncrewed Submarine. https://www.twz.com/news-features/everything-we-just-learned-about-the-ghost-shark-uncrewed-submarine
7. Military Times — US Navy partners with Anduril to develop XL underwater vessel. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/03/12/us-navy-partners-with-anduril-to-develop-xl-underwater-vessel/
8. New Atlas — US Navy picks robot sub 'mothership' to unleash underwater drone swarms. https://newatlas.com/military/us-navy-anduril-prototype-mothership-drone-sub/
9. Anduril Industries — Dive-XL product page. https://www.anduril.com/dive-xl
10. Defence Blog — Royal Australian Navy names autonomous systems unit. https://defence-blog.com/royal-australian-navy-names-autonomous-systems-unit/
11. Anduril Industries — Ghost Shark Factory Opens in Sydney — First Vehicle Off the Line Ahead of Schedule. https://www.anduril.com/news/ghost-shark-factory-opens-in-sydney-first-vehicle-off-the-line-ahead-of-schedule-ready-for
12. Analytics Insight — Anduril Valuation Reaches $61 Billion After $5 Billion Series H Funding Round. https://www.analyticsinsight.net/news/anduril-valuation-reaches-61-billion-after-5-billion-series-h-funding-round