Australia is putting a robot submarine into the water that no sailor will ever ride in, and the Royal Australian Navy is spending A$1.7 billion to build a fleet of them. The vehicle is Ghost Shark, an extra-large autonomous underwater vehicle developed by Anduril Australia with the Royal Australian Navy and Australia’s Defence Science and Technology Group. In October 2026 the programme crossed a line it had carefully avoided for years: the government publicly unveiled what the secretive drone submarine can actually carry and do. Mines, swarms of aerial drones and seabed supply caches are now officially part of the picture. The announcement turned Ghost Shark from a promising experiment into a declared weapon system.
A Submarine With No Crew and No Periscope Watch
Ghost Shark belongs to a class of vessels navies call XL-AUVs: extra-large autonomous underwater vehicles, far bigger than the torpedo-sized drones used for simple survey work. It is Australian-designed and is being built locally at a purpose-built Anduril factory in Sydney, which includes an in-water testing tank. The design is modular, so the middle of the vehicle can be reconfigured around different payloads rather than rebuilt for every mission. Reporting on the programme describes a hull compact enough to be transported in a standard shipping container and airlifted by heavy transport aircraft. Once launched and given a mission, the vehicle operates autonomously rather than being steered minute by minute from the surface.
That autonomy is the entire point of the concept. A crewed submarine is one of the most expensive machines a navy owns, and every patrol risks the lives aboard it. An uncrewed vehicle can be sent on long, dull or dangerous missions, from watching undersea cables to scouting contested waters, without putting a crew in harm’s way. It can also be produced in numbers that crewed submarines cannot match at any realistic budget. Australia, with one of the longest coastlines in the world and a small fleet of crewed boats, feels that arithmetic more sharply than most countries.
The A$1.7 Billion Bet on Robot Submarines
The production commitment behind Ghost Shark is substantial and unusually fast by defence standards. In September 2025 the Australian government signed a contract worth about A$1.7 billion for a fleet of dozens of the vehicles, following a joint development phase funded by the government and Anduril. The first production vessels began reaching the Navy in early 2026, barely a few years after the programme started. The Ghost Shark funding sits inside a wider plan to invest up to A$5.8 billion over the decade in autonomous and uncrewed undersea warfare. It also forms part of AUKUS Pillar II, the arm of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States pact devoted to advanced military technology rather than nuclear submarines themselves.
Speed has been the programme’s signature from the beginning. Anduril built its reputation on developing military systems on commercial timelines, using its own money alongside government funding and iterating in the open. Australian officials have leaned into that model, presenting Ghost Shark as proof that sovereign industry can deliver complex capability quickly. Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy pointed out that the Sydney factory had been open for less than a year while finished vehicles were already rolling off the line. In an era when major warships routinely arrive a decade late, a submarine programme measured in months draws attention well beyond Australia.
Ghost Shark Gets Its Teeth
The October 19, 2026 announcement at Anduril’s Sydney facility was about payloads, the equipment that turns a swimming robot into a military tool. Conroy summarised it in one line: Ghost Shark has teeth now. Officials revealed that the vehicle can lay sea mines, deliver supply caches to the seabed for special operations forces, and launch uncrewed aerial vehicles. Days later, Anduril released video showing a Ghost Shark surfacing, opening launch tubes on its upper hull and putting an Altius aerial drone into the sky. Australian representatives said a single vehicle could carry at least two dozen of the drones across two launchers, for reconnaissance or strike missions far beyond the submarine’s own sensors.
Each payload solves a different problem for a navy short on crewed hulls. Sea mines let a small fleet threaten large areas of ocean and choke enemy movement without exposing a ship or submarine to do the laying. Aerial drones launched from a surfaced Ghost Shark extend its eyes over the horizon and can hunt or hit targets the underwater vehicle could never reach itself. Seabed supply caches support clandestine forces operating far from friendly ports. Some of this equipment was set to be exercised with AUKUS partners at Exercise Maritime Big Play Pacific off San Diego, alongside Australia’s Speartooth and BlueBottle uncrewed vessels. Testing alongside American and British systems matters, because these robots are expected to fight as part of an allied network, not alone.
Why the Undersea Contest Is Driving All of This
Ghost Shark arrives in a region where undersea warfare is intensifying quickly. China’s navy, including its submarine force, has grown rapidly, and the sea lanes and undersea cables around Australia carry the trade the country’s economy depends on. Protecting that infrastructure, and being able to deny an adversary free movement through northern approaches, are central tasks in Australia’s defence strategy. Crewed submarines alone cannot be in enough places at once, especially while Australia waits for its future nuclear-powered fleet under AUKUS. Fleets of cheaper autonomous vehicles are meant to fill the gaps, watching, listening and, if necessary, fighting in waters too risky or too numerous for crewed boats.
Other navies are watching the experiment closely, including the United States. In March 2026 the U.S. Defense Innovation Unit and the U.S. Navy selected Anduril’s related Dive-XL vehicle for a prototyping effort aimed at fielding extra-large autonomous submarines, and one Ghost Shark has been ordered for the U.S. Navy. That cross-pollination is precisely what AUKUS Pillar II was designed to produce: shared technology, shared testing and production capacity in more than one country. Secrecy still surrounds Ghost Shark’s exact range, speed and size, and no autonomous submarine has yet fought a real war. But with production funded, payloads public and vehicles in the water, Australia’s robot submarine has moved from concept to capability faster than almost anyone expected.
Source: Anduril’s Futuristic ‘Ghost Shark’ Drone Submarine Takes to the Water in Australia
