Defense technology company Anduril Industries said it will build a new production facility in Rhode Island capable of producing up to 200 of its Dive-LD autonomous underwater vehicles annually.
The company will use its own money, plus some support from the state of Rhode Island, to establish the factory in Quonset Point.
The factory is scheduled to open in late 2025, come into operation in early 2026, and reach full capacity by the end of that year: 50 hulls per year, with the ability to scale up to 200 per year if customer demand requires it. .
Until the facility opens, the company will continue to build Dive-LD hulls at its marine engineering center in Quincy, Massachusetts. Anduril was awarded a contract in February to supply Dive-LD vehicles to the Department of Defense through the Defense Innovation Unit’s commercial solutions open process. The US Navy later awarded the company an award of $18.6 million using this contracted vehicle.
Anduril Chief Strategy Officer Chris Brose told reporters on June 11 that the company proved the maturity and utility of its Dive-LD vehicle during a swim event last year that led to the DIU contract. But a remaining and recurring question from the government has been: “Can Anduril increase production to truly achieve high-rate production numbers?”
He said the Quonset Point plant “will show the U.S. government that we are ready and capable of fulfilling large contracts, if those contracts become available.”
The installation of the 100,000 to 150,000 square foot production facility will create more than 100 jobs over the next five years.
It will also allow Anduril to try to realize its vision of building a huge fleet of AUVs. A company release notes that the Dive-LD family of vehicles is “designed from the ground up for scale production, with a heavy emphasis on commercial-off-the-shelf components with robust supply chains, a modular design and advanced, scalable manufacturing techniques that enable rapid iterations based on customer needs.”
The company can build 12 Dive-LD vehicles at the Quincy facility today, or it can increase up to 24 per year if necessary by adding extra shifts.
“We are out of space in terms of our capacity at the Quincy facility to meet the demand we are seeing from the Navy right now, let alone where we believe it will occur in the future,” Brose said.
“This is the challenge that I think all defense companies face in terms of how much to facilitate to satisfy a demand that is not always crystal clear,” Brose continued. “Our approach to this is: Let’s lean forward. Let’s invest in ourselves; We are going to invest in our ability to produce this type of system in a totally different way. And we will create facilities to satisfy a demand that we hope will grow,” rather than waiting for the government to award a contract and having to play catch-up on building a larger factory.
As for the Quonset Point location, Brose said the region is a “phenomenal center of subsea expertise and production.”
“Navigation[al] Undersea Warfare Center, other major contractors that are working on significant undersea programs, access to the water – you just have an extremely rich environment of undersea expertise, talented workforce, and it’s phenomenal for Anduril to be part of that and plug into that, Brose said.
