Ghost Shark: Australia’s Anduril XL-AUV will lay mines and launch swarms of drones

Australia has revealed what the Ghost Shark can carry, the extra-large autonomous underwater vehicle (XL-AUV) that Anduril Australia is building for the Royal Australian Navy. According to an Australian Defence Ministry announcement of October 19, the government is for the first time presenting the development and integration of payloads on the Ghost Shark, on the smaller Speartooth underwater vehicle and on the BlueBottle uncrewed surface vessel. They include remote placement of supplies, sea mines and uncrewed aircraft.

Anduril, for its part, summed it up in a post on X: the Ghost Shark carries “sea mines, logistics caches, and air-launched effects for ISR and strike”.

The announcement was made at Anduril’s factory in New South Wales, where the Ghost Sharks are built and the payloads are already being tested. Displayed there alongside were Anduril’s ALTIUS-600 drone vehicles and Rheinmetall’s Asteria mine. According to what was presented, one Ghost Shark will be able to lay up to 12 mines in a single mission, launch ALTIUS drones for reconnaissance or strike and leave caches of supplies on the seabed. The supply payloads are being developed by the Defence Science and Technology Group (DSTG). The vehicle’s design is modular, so that the same craft can be configured for the mission.

“Ghost Shark has teeth now”

“Ghost Shark is an iconic Australian success that showcases the ingenuity of our defence industry and the value of investing in sovereign capability. Our government opened this factory less than a year ago, and Ghost Sharks capable of a range of complex missions far from our shores are now coming off the production line at an increasing rate and into the hands of the Royal Australian Navy,” said Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy. At the event he added that “Ghost Shark has teeth now and will be able to cause damage to any potential adversary.”

Some of the payloads will take part this week in the Maritime Big Play Pacific exercise in San Diego, an exercise under Pillar II of the AUKUS agreement with the United States and the United Kingdom. In May the defence ministers of the three countries had announced the development of payloads for underwater drones as the first joint project of Pillar II. Canberra is investing up to A$5.8 billion over the decade in autonomous and uncrewed undersea warfare systems, of which A$1.7 billion is for acquiring a Ghost Shark fleet.

Anduril is expanding rapidly in the naval industry in the US too, where it announced a new shipyard in Maryland for sections of Virginia-class submarines. Underwater drones and their “mothership” vessels are becoming an arena of competition in Asia as well, with China building a second UUV mothership at Guangzhou.