Anduril Industries laid out a $3.7 billion plan to build a Maryland shipyard aimed at turning out key hardware for the U.S. Navy’s Virginia-class submarines. The effort pairs private spending with a potential multibillion-dollar Navy deal, giving the defense tech company a bigger role in the submarine supply chain.
The Navy also awarded a contract worth as much as $2.9 billion for submarine component production, with compensation tied to output and Anduril taking on most of the delivery risk, Reuters reported. Together, the investment and the contract could total up to $6.6 billion.
The Maryland site will be called Arsenal-2 and will be located in Baltimore County. The company expects the facility to be operating by the end of the decade, and it projected 3,100 direct jobs plus more than 11,000 additional jobs supported indirectly.
Christian Brose, Anduril’s chief strategy officer, described the structure of the Navy arrangement as outcome-based, saying, “It’s really the government buying the results of what we’re able to produce from the facility that we’ve invested in.”
The spending and contract come as the U.S. and partner nations work to increase weapons output following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and fighting in the Middle East.
Anduril is also expanding its capacity in California to make Virginia-class submarine parts including torpedo tubes. Virginia-class boats are nuclear-powered attack submarines used for missions that include anti-submarine operations, land-attack strikes, and surveillance
The company expects to move into larger sections such as modules and hull components once the Maryland yard begins operating. The submarines are built by General Dynamics’ Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Industries.
Anduril, launched in 2017 by Palmer Luckey, has been known for autonomous systems, drones and military software, and has been pushing further into maritime and undersea technology.
The U.S. Army also recently awarded Anduril a contract worth up to $1.8 billion to move its Next-Generation Command and Control system from large-scale testing toward operational deployment, beginning with I Corps. The award has a base value of $162.8 million, with options that could bring the total value to $1.8 billion over five years.
The company previously announced an Ohio site called Arsenal-1, a $1 billion project that began producing autonomous combat drones this year.
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