DIU picks 3 companies to prototype large undersea drones for Navy

WASHINGTON —The Defense Innovation Unit today announced it had selected three companies to develop and prototype unmanned undersea vehicles with a focus on employing payloads for subsea and seabed warfare as well as undersea warfare.

“This project will also drive advancements in underwater engineering, autonomous systems, communications, and shape employment of [Large Displacement Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (LDUUV)] for future naval operations,” according to the DIU statement. “Collectively, with DIU and [the Navy’s program office], these organizations will provide rigorous assessments in order to optimize alignment with an evolving global defense landscape, beginning with live demonstrations in March 2024.”

The three companies selected were Oceaneering International, Kongsberg Discovery and Anduril Industries.

“Our selection takes place at a critical moment for the Department of Defense,” said Anduril CEO and co-founder Brian Schimpf in a statement. “In an era of strategic competition, our [autonomous underwater vehicles] like Dive-LD provide urgently-needed capability to deter maritime threats around the world. We are excited to work with our U.S. Government partners as we look to build advanced, affordable, autonomous capabilities at scale in support of U.S. Navy priorities.”

Spokespeople for Kongsberg Discovery and Oceaneering did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

DIU announced its search in July for commercially available vehicles similar to the Navy’s former Snakehead LDUUV. That search was largely prompted by the service sacking its own program over vehicle design issues as well as congressional prodding to scan the market for readily available solutions.

Although the Snakehead program was canceled, the missions it was envisioned to complete — intelligence preparation of the environment (IPOE) and subsea and seabed warfare — are still very much a capability gap for the Navy, which for the past several years has issued contracts to several companies for UUV programs of varying sizes.

Snakehead was envisioned to be roughly four feet in diameter and seven-to-eight feet long. Boeing is on contract to develop and manufacture a vehicle larger than Snakehead, the Orca Extra Large UUV. Meanwhile, Leidos and HII are working on medium- and small-UUVs, respectively.