American defense tech firm Anduril and South Korean shipbuilder Hyundai Heavy Industries (HHI) announced today a strategic partnership. Their goal is to design a new class of maritime drones, hoping to secure a spot in the US Navy’s latest unmanned surface vessel program.
A Strategic Alliance for the Maritime Future
The collaboration between Anduril, a rapidly growing American defense tech firm, and HHI, a South Korean shipbuilding giant, marks a significant step in developing autonomous naval capabilities. This alliance aims to meet the evolving needs of the US Navy in a context where maritime superiority increasingly relies on unmanned systems.
Autonomous Surface Vessels: Versatility and Modularity
“Anduril and HD Hyundai’s ASV [autonomous surface vessel] is built for modularity, speed of production, and mission flexibility. Its open-architecture design supports interchangeable payloads, allowing the same vessel to perform intelligence, surveillance, strike, electronic warfare, and other missions through rapid reconfiguration,” according to a statement from the American firm. Furthermore, “the vessel’s distinctive central superstructure provides an unobstructed 360-degree field of view, enabling continuous situational awareness and optimal payload performance.” This vision aligns perfectly with the Navy’s Modular Attack Surface Craft (MASC) program, envisioned to carry a variety of payloads and be easily built and repaired in large quantities (source: Breaking Defense).
Rebuilding American Naval Capacity
The first dual-use ASV prototype is currently being fabricated in Korea, utilizing „[HHI’s] industrial capacity to validate designs, integrate propulsion and power systems, automate ship functions with autonomy, and prepare for U.S. production ahead of its maiden voyage,” according to Anduril’s statement. Future vessels, including the MASC variant, will be completely built in the United States. Anduril has invested tens of millions of dollars to revamp a previously retired shipyard in the Pacific Northwest region at the historic former Foss Shipyard in Seattle, Washington. The former Foss Shipyard closed its operations in October 2021, citing a „regular evaluation of business lines.”
Responding to Geopolitical Challenges
The closure of numerous commercial and defense-oriented shipyards in recent decades has become an increasingly prolific concern for Pentagon brass who frequently cite China’s exponentially larger shipbuilding output compared to the United States. Anduril believes the Pacific Northwest is a prime market for its new maritime drone production. “The Pacific Northwest, home to the wartime legacy of Kaiser Shipyards and the original Freedom’s Forge, offers the infrastructure, supply chain depth, and skilled labor to expand U.S. shipbuilding capacity,” according to a company statement. “The region provides the ideal conditions to re-energize American shipbuilding and grow the maritime workforce.”
Anduril’s Vision and HHI’s Ambitions
The California-based defense tech firm Anduril, started by Palmer Luckey in 2017, has aggressively staked out positions in numerous technology sectors prized by the Pentagon in recent years. This includes challenging some of the best-known primes in the country for a chance at both Navy and Air Force unmanned aviation programs. Hyundai Heavy Industries, for its part, is one of South Korea’s three major shipbuilders and, alongside its contemporaries such as Hanwha, has been making a sustained push in recent months to establish itself in the American defense industrial base. Those efforts have largely taken the form of industry-to-industry partnerships with American firms, such as the broader partnership HHI announced with Anduril last year focused on developing autonomous systems. The South Korean company has also recently struck agreements with Germany’s Siemens and American shipbuilder HII with eyes on furthering its position in the United States’ maritime industrial base.
