U.S. Navy Selects Anduril Dive-XL Autonomous Submarine for 1,000-Nautical-Mile Undersea Missions.

Anduril has been selected by the U.S. Navy and the Defense Innovation Unit to demonstrate its Dive-XL extra-large autonomous undersea vehicle for long-range unmanned missions. The program could expand U.S. undersea surveillance and strike capacity while reducing reliance on scarce crewed submarines.

Anduril has secured a U.S. Navy and Defense Innovation Unit selection for an extra-large autonomous undersea vehicle that could give American forces a lower-cost way to push sensing, seabed payloads, and potentially strike capacity deep into contested waters without committing a crewed submarine. The award is strategically significant because it moves the Navy closer to an operationally representative XL-AUV demonstration in a mission area where endurance, stealth, and magazine depth matter as much as raw speed. Anduril said it will conduct that long-duration Dive-XL demonstration within four months of contract award, while the company’s selected vehicle is closely related to the Ghost Shark system already developed for Australia.
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Anduril’s Dive-XL gives the U.S. Navy a long-range autonomous undersea platform designed to extend ISR, seabed warfare, and potential strike capabilities in contested waters while reducing reliance on crewed submarines (Picture source: Anduril).

What the Navy needs from this class of vehicle is already clear from the DIU requirement set. The service wants an undersea craft able to travel beyond 1,000 nautical miles, operate deeper than 200 meters, navigate in GPS-denied waters, communicate across the air-water boundary, and carry modular payloads ranging from smaller seabed packages to items as large as 21 feet long and 21 inches in diameter. That demand reflects a Pacific theater problem: crewed submarines remain scarce, expensive, and too valuable to use for every ISR, seabed warfare, decoy, mine, or payload-emplacement mission. Navy leadership has also linked large robotic undersea systems to its drive toward a hybrid fleet built for a potential high-end fight with China.

Dive-XL is attractive because it appears designed from the outset for deployability and modularity rather than exquisite one-off construction. Anduril describes it as an extra-large autonomous undersea vehicle able to integrate multiple large payloads for defense or commercial missions requiring long distances, extended durations, and variable depths, while also fitting inside a standard 40-foot shipping container for transport by airlift, truck, or ship. That logistics profile matters operationally: it lowers the barrier to dispersal, forward staging, and theater-level repositioning. The Ghost Shark derivative has already been marketed by Anduril and Australian officials as a stealthy, long-range, multi-role system for persistent ISR and strike, and Dive-XL previously completed a 100-hour single voyage as Anduril pushed toward a 1,000 nautical mile fully submerged mission.

The armament angle is where the platform becomes more than a sensor truck. The current U.S. selection is for the XL-AUV itself, and Anduril has not publicly said the Navy award includes its Copperhead family, but the company has already built a clear weapons path around Dive-XL. Copperhead comes in 100-pound and 500-pound classes, with munition variants sized broadly along the same diameter classes as Mk 54 and Mk 48 torpedoes, speeds above 30 knots, and recoverable, reusable design logic intended to drive cost down. Most importantly, Anduril has said a single Dive-XL can carry dozens of Copperhead-100s or multiple Copperhead-500s. Tactically, that points to an autonomous mothership concept able to infiltrate, loiter, seed seabed sensors, relay data, and then launch distributed undersea effects instead of expending one legacy torpedo per target opportunity.

The development path also helps explain why Anduril is suddenly a serious Navy contender. DIU and PMS 394 selected Anduril, Kongsberg, and Oceaneering in February 2024 to prototype large-displacement unmanned underwater vehicles for subsea and seabed warfare as well as broader undersea warfare missions. In parallel, Anduril’s Australian Ghost Shark effort started in 2022 as a co-funded project with the Royal Australian Navy and Defence scientists, with three prototypes planned. Australia then unveiled the first prototype in April 2024, described it as a stealthy, long-range ISR-and-strike capability, and in September 2025 committed A$1.7 billion to acquire and support a fleet over five years after saying all three prototypes had been delivered on budget and ahead of schedule. For Washington, that Australian record is not a side note. It is evidence that Anduril can move an undersea autonomy concept from prototype to program faster than traditional naval acquisition usually allows.

Against competitors, Anduril’s proposition is not that Dive-XL is the biggest vehicle in the field. Boeing’s Orca remains the heavyweight benchmark, with publicly stated range up to 6,500 nautical miles and a 34-foot modular payload section suited to monthslong missions and large-volume carriage. But Orca has followed a more bespoke and slower development path, with the Navy still describing XLE-1 in contractor testing in December 2024 and outside reporting in 2025 noting continued schedule slippage versus early plans. Kongsberg’s HUGIN Endurance offers 1,200 nautical miles of range, up to 15 days endurance, a 6,000-meter depth rating, and strong credentials in navigation and seabed sensing, while Oceaneering’s Freedom AUV brings commercial maturity, proven autonomy, and manufacturing readiness. Based on public material, however, Anduril stands out for combining fieldable XL-AUV logistics with a visible roadmap toward organic autonomous effectors.

For the U.S. Navy, that combination is exactly why this class of armament matters. A stealthy, container-transportable XL-AUV with modular payload space and a pathway to reusable undersea strike weapons can widen the Navy’s undersea presence, complicate Chinese planning, preserve manned submarines for the highest-value tasks, and create distributed combat mass below the surface at a lower cost point than another exquisite submarine. If Anduril delivers the coming demonstration as advertised, the real story will not be one more unmanned vehicle contract. It will be the emergence of a new undersea force design in which autonomous carriers and autonomous effectors begin to expand the Navy’s underwater magazine, sensing web, and tactical reach at the same time.