Ghost Shark

Ghost Shark is an extra-large autonomous undersea vehicle developed by Anduril Industries through its Australian arm, in partnership with the Royal Australian Navy and the Defence Science and Technology Group. It is the missionised military descendant of the company’s commercial undersea work — the hull and autonomy stack that began with Anduril’s 2022 acquisition of Dive Technologies and the Dive-LD vehicle — scaled up into a roughly twelve-metre platform meant to range far from any host ship and stay submerged for weeks. Australia has framed it as a complement to the nuclear-powered submarines it is acquiring: cheaper, uncrewed, and producible in numbers.

Australia has kept the design closely held, saying publicly that the vehicle’s specifications have not been released, so most figures in circulation are estimates. What is known is the shape of the programme rather than the boat. The vehicle is all-electric and propeller-driven, built around a “flooded” architecture that dispenses with a single large pressure hull in favour of waterproof zones, and carries modular multi-mission bays. A stated design goal is to fit the vehicle inside a standard shipping container for transport and launch. Its software is Anduril’s Lattice, the same autonomy layer that runs the company’s air and ground systems, handling navigation and mission management without a tether back to the surface.

The programme has moved fast. A co-development contract in May 2022 funded three prototypes in three years; the first, “Alpha,” was revealed in April 2024, and the first series-production vehicle came off the line at a new Sydney factory in October 2025. In September 2025 Australia announced a roughly A$1.7 billion Program of Record to acquire dozens of the vehicles over about five years, with a first operational delivery to the Navy planned for early 2026. The United States Navy has ordered a single prototype, and Anduril has been pitching Ghost Shark and the related Dive-XL to American customers. The most direct competitor is Boeing’s larger Orca extra-large UUV, a programme that has run years late and well over budget.