The three prototype Extra Large Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (XL-AUVs), which Anduril Australia is under contract to build for the Department of Defense, will be the size of a school bus and their hulls will not be waterproof – far from it. Instead, each prototype will have a wet body – a design where water flows freely inside the XL-UAV’s coating.

This makes the submersible boat easy and quick to fabricate as no heavy welding is required to convert the hull into a pressure vessel for the human crew.

As Anduril CEO David Goodrich points out, thanks to a simple and cost-effective manufacturing system, the design can vary in size and payload to suit specific tasks.

“Every prototype will be iterative; we don’t just make three identical vehicles,” he explains. “Over the three-year life of the program, they will be delivered at well below the cost of existing underwater capabilities.

“They will have an aluminum frame covered in a light-colored skin with gaps in it, and they will travel completely underwater. They will have a common battery-powered propulsion system in the stern, a common navigation and control system in the bow, and everything in between for payload.

“Modules in the middle can have different lengths according to specific requirements.

“The batteries are pressure resistant and all navigation and control subsystems are contained in pressure tanks the size of propane tanks located throughout the vehicle, leaving the maximum payload area accessible through the payload door. and covers”.

Goodrich declined to speculate on the payloads, but said they would likely support a range of mine countermeasures, mine countermeasures and reconnaissance, surveillance and reconnaissance missions.

The range and durability of the XL-AUV will depend on which payload modules are being carried. However, as a starting point, Anduril will use technology derived from recently acquired US AUV manufacturer Dive Technologies, whose 3-ton AUV is capable of autonomous missions up to 10 days with an architecture that scales for multiweek missions. It can also operate at depths of up to 6,000 m on the sea floor.

“The XL UAV will integrate with the artificial intelligence-based Lattice Anduril operating system and operate independently. “There’s not a lot of communication that submarines can go, so they have to be super intelligent,” says Goodrich.

“Our autonomous systems mean you can have really complex sensor processing on the vehicle; thus, you can use the propulsion signature, sonar reflections, etc. to identify the vessel of interest and what exactly it is doing. It can do things like analyze. There are several ways the XL-AUV can communicate through the Cage system.” Source