We have now gotten our first look at the Ghost Shark extra-large autonomous undersea vehicle (XL-AUV) operating submerged thanks to the Autonomous Warrior 2024 maritime autonomous capabilities demonstration in Australia. The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) is the first known customer for the highly modular Ghost Shark, which manufacturer Anduril is now pitching elsewhere, including to the U.S. Navy.
The Australian Department of Defense released a video montage, seen below, from Autonomous Warrior 2024 that includes clips of Ghost Shark below the waves this week. The event took place predominantly in and around Jervis Bay on Australia's eastern coast over a period of three weeks earlier this month.
There are two separate clips of the Ghost Shark in the Autonomous Warrior 2024 video, captures from which are seen at the top of this story and below. In both cases, the top of the mast at the front of the drone submarine appears to be blurred out.
Ghost Shark's mast, which is distinctly lower profile than what is typically found on other uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUV), is a particularly notable feature of the design. Otherwise, what can be seen in the Autonomous Warrior 2024 video looks to be in line with imagery of the drone submarine that has been released since it first broke cover in April.
"We don't have big masts running down the backbone of our vehicle that a lot of other designs do that then preclude the ability for the payloads to come out in different directions... of the payload module itself," Dr. Shane Arnott, Senior Vice President for Engineering at Anduril and the company's maritime lead, told The War Zone in an interview back in August. "So we have... in effect, unlimited flexibility in this design, just the way that we've configured the vehicle and the payload bay itself could be almost anything within a size configuration that you can dream up. We haven't encountered crazy idea yet from a customer that ... we can't fit."
Australian authorities have said they expect to use their future fleet of Ghost Sharks for "persistent intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance [ISR] and strike," but have provided no additional details so far about how the drone submarines might be configured to perform those missions. Anduril has also declined to provide more specific information about the UUV's capabilities, including its maximum range and endurance. You can read more about what is known about the design to date here.
Regardless, events like Autonomous Warrior 2024 offer important opportunities for the RAN and Anduril to further test and refine Ghost Shark capabilities, as well as explore how they can be alongside other crewed and uncrewed platforms. Anduril announced earlier this year that it had brought a Ghost Shark to the United States for the first time as part of efforts to expand its capacity to test the UUV, as well as demonstrate it to prospective customers.
"There's just a lot of test points for us to hit. So, having the ability to have multiple Ghost Sharks, and particularly in different waters around the world, such that we can burn down those test points and just grow our trust and the customer's trust by testing and 'show me, don't tell me,' is kind of a really big part of why we've done this [bringing the UUV to the United States," Anduril's Arnott explained to us earlier this year.
Ghost Shark was not the only uncrewed platform involved in Autonomous Warrior 2024, which is part of a larger Australian maritime autonomy initiative called Maritime Big Play (MBP) and is also tied in with the "advanced capabilities" Pillar II of the trilateral Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) defense cooperation agreement. Pillar I of the AUKUS agreement centers on the RAN's acquisition and fielding of a nuclear-powered submarine force and assisting with that effort.
Maritime Big Play also has links to the U.S. military's Technology Readiness Experimentation (T-REX) effort and NATO's Robotic Experimentation and Prototyping Augmented by Maritime Unmanned Systems (REPMUS) exercise series, according to the Pentagon. The U.S. Navy has also been conducting a growing number of large-scale uncrewed-focused maritime exercises and demonstration events in recent years.
Also seen in the Australian Department of Defense video are Greenough Advanced Rescue Craft (GARC), Swiftships Sea-Stalker, and Ocius Bluebottle uncrewed surface vessels, as well as a REMUS-series UUV. Ocean Aero's Triton hybrid UUV/USV and at least one other larger UUV design are visible at points in the montage, too, as are various uncrewed aerial systems and high-altitude balloons.
There are two clips showing the apparent launch of a payload from the hull of what may be a docked RAN Collins class submarine based on a flag seen in the background. What is being fired and why is not entirely clear, but it has a torpedo-like outward appearance and could be an expendable countermeasure of some kind. The U.S. Navy and others have also been actively working on submarine-launched aerial drones and UUVs, including types small enough to be launched from existing countermeasures launchers.
"A versatile and robust software-defined network architecture called Multi-Domain Uncrewed Secure Integrated Communications (MUSIC) was tested for its ability to enable seamless communication and coordination across diverse unmanned systems and operational environments" during Autonomous Warrior 2024, according to a Pentagon press release. "The Common Control System (CCS) was also featured in the exercise, built on an open architecture to provide uncrewed vehicles hardware and software that works across several different systems. This effort supports future work to create an AUKUS-wide Common Control System, fusing [the] best elements of the three countries' existing systems."
The three AUKUS partners increasingly see uncrewed maritime platforms above and below the waves, as well as aerial drones, as not only important, but critical for providing increased sensor coverage, wider and more resilient communications networks, and other capabilities, and for doing so in cost-effective manners. The U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps, in particular, are envisioning future fleets of UUVs and USVs that can carry out kinetic attacks and employ electronic warfare and other non-kinetic effects, as well as emplace mines.
Evidence continues to grow from wargames carried out by the U.S. military and other organizations that uncrewed aerial and maritime capabilities could have especially decisive impacts in a future high-end fight across the broad expanses of the Pacific against China, especially one over Taiwan. With this in mind, America's armed forces have been helping Taiwan with a plan to defend the island against an invasion from the mainland by turning the airspace and waters into a "hellscape" full of uncrewed platforms, as you can read more about here.
"Autonomous Warrior/Maritime Big Play creates a unique opportunity for our three countries to work together, which will ultimately improve operational efficiency and allow us to work more cohesively against common threats," Heidi Shyu, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, said in a statement about Autonomous Warrior 2024 this week. "This collaborative approach enables us to reduce acquisition, maintenance, and training cost by creating economies of scale."
It's worth noting here that members of the Japan Self-Defense Forces observed Autonomous Warrior 2024, which was the first time members of that country's armed forces had been present at a Maritime Big Play event.
"All of this together underpins a more strategic approach to ensure that AUKUS and like-minded partners can operate new autonomous uncrewed systems more effectively as a coalition force from the start," Madeline Mortelmans, the U.S. official currently performing the duties of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans and Capabilities, also said in a statement about Autonomous Warrior 2024 this week.
The AUKUS triumvirate is now reportedly considering increasing Japan's involvement in Pillar II activities. This is in line with broader and largely U.S.-led efforts to create a more unified front among allies and partners in the Pacific to challenge Beijing.
"AUKUS partners have long histories of working together on defense and security issues, and have deep, enduring partnerships based on shared values," Under Secretary Shyu said. "By investing in novel and innovative capabilities directly aligned to AUKUS mission priorities, as well as making future advancements in emerging technologies like AI [artificial intelligence] and Quantum [computing], we support a more stable region -- one where all nations are empowered to make their own sovereign decisions free from coercion -- a world that centers on hope for the opportunity and prosperity of the future."
Ghost Shark, which we have now finally seen plying its way underwater, and the platforms involved in Autonomous Warrior 2024 all reflect this broader vision of the coming uncrewed ecosystem.