Anduril wades into traditional shipbuilding arena with major submarine play

President Trump speaks in Sparrows Point, Maryland, standing in front of the USS Billings, a Freedom-variant littoral combat ship, on October 6, 2026. Jim WATSON / AFP via Getty Images

The defense tech company plans to build submarine components at a shipyard outside of Baltimore in which the government will have an approximate 40 percent stake, President Donald Trump said Tuesday.

SPARROWS POINT, Md.— Defense tech company Anduril aims to speed up Virginia-class submarine production by building components, such as torpedo tubes, at a future site outside the nation’s capital by 2030.

The new facility, to be called Arsenal-2, will be the company’s second manufacturing plant and is part of a $6.6 billion effort funded by Anduril, at $3.7 billion, and the U.S. Navy through a $2.9 billion contract award. That contract tasks Anduril with building “critical components and large scale assemblies of the Virginia-class” to be delivered to General Dynamics Electric Boat in Connecticut, and HII Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia, which are the prime contractors on the Navy’s submarine programs, according to the company’s announcement .

Flanked by two of Anduril’s Dive-XL vessels, President Donald Trump spoke to a mostly Navy audience Tuesday on a range of topics, from Venezuela to tariffs, and even gave a quick endorsement of subsea autonomous vessels before he announced the U.S. government’s stake in the new shipyard.

“The ultimate proof of our commitment to ensuring the shipyard's enduring success: American taxpayers will receive a 40 percent stake in the new shipyard. We get 40 percent,” Trump said, without providing more details.

That stake is in a new Anduril subsidiary created to operate the future shipyard. The government is not taking an equity stake in Anduril, the company said.

Additional specifics on the deal were not immediately available.

Submarines are “our oceans' apex predators” that are needed “now more than ever” for deterrence, Vice Adm. Robert Gaucher, who oversees the Navy’s submarine construction, said during the event at Tradepoint Atlantic near Baltimore. But he also acknowledged the nation’s lack of shipbuilding capacity.

“As other nations challenge the rules-based order that keeps our oceans free and open, we need the deterrence and denial of our submarines now more than ever,” he said. “At the same time, we must reckon with the fact that we have lost industrial capacity. Today, we start to rebuild it.”

The shipyard is being designed with reconfigurable production lines and will be underpinned by Anduril’s ArsenalOS industrial software platform.

“What we're really focused on here is being able to build an entire shipyard with a software and digital foundation. So that covers everything from how the factory is laid out, how work moves through the factory in a logical way, how all of that work is managed,” Chris Brose, Anduril’s president and chief strategy officer, told reporters.

That means “automating things that you can automate, keeping digital records of things like precision welding, so that you have traceability back to all the work that was done and an ability to understand, in very precise detail, for the purposes of certification and other types of kind of safety critical measures, what was done at what point all along the way, and having that traceability throughout the entire yard.”

The idea, he said, is for software to make it easier for new or inexperienced shipbuilders to perform tasks because they “can come in with a modicum of training enabled by technology—with digital designs, technical augmentation—and really understand how they can [be] contributing much, much faster.”

The company plans to break ground by early 2027 on Arsenal-2, which will span approximately 40 football fields on nearly 200 acres just outside of Baltimore. Initial operations are slated to begin by 2030.

The Navy contract also ties payments to “demonstrated production outcomes,” Anduril said in its news release .

Having a non-traditional defense company like Anduril building submarine components is an example of the Navy’s strategy to increase shipbuilding throughput by distributing the workload across multiple suppliers in the industrial base.

“Today, roughly 10 percent of shipbuilding work is performed at distributed sites. Our goal is 50 percent. New hulls will prioritize modular, digital designs that enable distributed shipbuilding across multiple yards and suppliers,” the Navy wrote in its 2026 shipbuilding plan earlier this year.

The move also deepens the Pentagon’s relationship with the company, which has several contracts across the military , and its leaders. Last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth named Anduril’s founder, Palmer Luckey, as part of an advising committee for Project Meridian, which will analyze future warfare needs.

Once operational, Anduril’s Baltimore plant is expected to increase overall Navy submarine production by 15 percent or about 9 million production hours per year. That should then translate into more ships produced through the Newport News and Electric Boat shipyards, Gaucher said: “Situated geographically between these two prime shipyards and connected to them by a network of sea, rail, and road, Arsenal-2 will take on the heavy component manufacturing.”

The facility will also build “components our prime shipyards need today, like precision torpedo tubes and impulse tanks,” he said, eventually “moving on to complex rafted module assemblies.”

The company also plans to eventually build sections of the ship’s hull.

Tuesday’s audience included about 100 sailors, and 200 midshipmen bused an hour from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao and Hegseth also spoke at the event.

The USS Billings, which was recently deployed in the Caribbean, served as a prominent backdrop to the stage. Sailors aboard the Freedom-class littoral combat ship could be seen standing at attention during the president’s address.

But many high-level Maryland officials, including Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, were absent from the hourslong event. Moore apparently skipped the event after being denied a speaking slot. Four Baltimore Ravens football players attended and did not speak, but were asked to stand as part of a special shoutout during the president’s remarks.

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2026年10月6日，特朗普总统在马里兰州斯帕罗斯角，站在“比林斯”号濒海战斗舰（一艘“自由”级濒海战斗舰）前发表讲话。图片来源：Jim WATSON / AFP via Getty Images

美国总统唐纳德·特朗普周二表示，这家国防科技公司计划在巴尔的摩郊外的一个造船厂建造潜艇部件，政府将持有该造船厂约 40% 的股份。

马里兰州斯帕罗斯角——国防科技公司 Anduril 计划在 2030 年前于美国首都郊外的一个未来地点建造鱼雷发射管等部件，以加快弗吉尼亚级潜艇的生产速度。

这座名为“Arsenal-2”的新工厂将是该公司第二家制造厂，也是一项总投资66亿美元的项目的一部分，该项目由Anduril公司出资37亿美元，美国海军则通过一份价值29亿美元的合同提供资金。根据该公司发布的公告，该合同要求Anduril公司建造“弗吉尼亚级潜艇的关键部件和大型组件”，并交付给位于康涅狄格州的通用动力电船公司和位于弗吉尼亚州的HII纽波特纽斯造船厂，这两家公司是美国海军潜艇项目的主要承包商。

周二，唐纳德·特朗普总统在安杜里尔公司的两艘Dive-XL潜水艇的簇拥下，向以海军为主的听众发表了讲话，内容涵盖委内瑞拉、关税等一系列话题，甚至在宣布美国政府入股这家新造船厂之前，还迅速对水下自主船舶表示了支持。

“我们致力于确保造船厂长期成功的最终证明是：美国纳税人将获得新造船厂40%的股份。我们自己也获得40%的股份，”特朗普说道，但没有提供更多细节。

该股份持有的是安杜里尔公司新成立的子公司，该子公司负责运营未来的造船厂。安杜里尔公司表示，政府并未持有该公司的任何股权。

关于这笔交易的更多细节尚不清楚。

海军潜艇建造负责人罗伯特·高彻中将在巴尔的摩附近大西洋贸易中心举行的活动上表示，潜艇是“海洋中的顶级掠食者”，如今比以往任何时候都更需要它们来发挥威慑作用。但他同时也承认，美国目前缺乏造船能力。

“当其他国家挑战维护海洋自由开放的规则秩序时，我们比以往任何时候都更需要潜艇的威慑和拒止能力，”他说。“与此同时，我们必须正视工业产能下降的事实。今天，我们开始重建它。”

该造船厂采用可重构生产线设计，并将以 Anduril 的 ArsenalOS 工业软件平台为基础。

“我们真正关注的是能够以软件和数字化为基础，构建一个完整的造船厂。这涵盖了从工厂布局、工作流程的合理化，到所有工作的管理等方方面面，”Anduril 总裁兼首席战略官 Chris Brose 告诉记者。

这意味着“将可以自动化的事情自动化，对精密焊接等事项进行数字化记录，以便追溯所有已完成的工作，并能够非常精确地了解整个过程中每个环节做了什么，以便进行认证和其他类型的安全关键措施，并在整个厂区内保持这种可追溯性。”

他表示，其理念是让软件能够帮助新手或经验不足的造船工人更轻松地完成任务，因为他们“可以通过技术手段（例如数字设计、技术增强）进行少量培训，真正了解如何更快地做出贡献”。

该公司计划于2027年初破土动工兴建Arsenal-2项目，该项目位于巴尔的摩郊外，占地近200英亩，面积相当于约40个足球场。初期运营预计将于2030年开始。

Anduril 在新闻稿中表示，海军合同还将付款与“已证明的生产成果”挂钩。

让像 Anduril 这样的非传统国防公司建造潜艇部件，是海军通过将工作量分配给工业基地中的多个供应商来提高造船效率的战略的一个例子。

“目前，大约10%的造船工作是在分散的地点进行的。我们的目标是50%。新型船体将优先采用模块化、数字化设计，以实现跨多个船厂和供应商的分布式造船，”美国海军在今年早些时候发布的2026年造船计划中写道。

此举也加深了五角大楼与这家在军方拥有多项合同的公司及其领导人的关系。上周，国防部长皮特·赫格塞斯任命安杜里尔公司创始人帕尔默·拉基为“子午线计划”顾问委员会成员，该计划将分析未来战争的需求。

安杜里尔位于巴尔的摩的工厂一旦投入运营，预计将使海军潜艇总产量提高15%，即每年约900万生产小时。高彻表示，这将转化为纽波特纽斯造船厂和通用动力电船造船厂的更多舰艇产量：“阿森纳-2工厂地理位置优越，位于这两个主要造船厂之间，并通过海运、铁路和公路网络与它们相连，将承担重型部件的制造。”

该设施还将建造“我们主要造船厂目前需要的部件，例如精密鱼雷发射管和脉冲水箱”，他表示，最终“将转向复杂的筏式模块组件”。

该公司还计划最终建造该船的部分船体。

周二的听众包括约100名水兵和200名从安纳波利斯美国海军学院乘车一小时前来的海军学员。代理海军部长洪曹和赫格塞斯也在活动上发表了讲话。

最近部署在加勒比海的“比林斯”号濒海战斗舰成为了舞台的醒目背景。在总统演讲期间，可以看到这艘自由级濒海战斗舰上的水兵们肃立致敬。

但包括民主党籍州长韦斯·摩尔在内的许多马里兰州高级官员缺席了这场持续数小时的活动。摩尔显然是因为被拒绝发言而缺席的。四名巴尔的摩乌鸦队橄榄球运动员出席了活动，他们没有发言，但在总统讲话期间，他们被邀请起立接受特别致敬。

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