Intro
The Dive-LD is a large-displacement autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) developed by Anduril Industries to enable persistent, long-range, and deep-water undersea missions with minimal human involvement. Designed for defense, maritime security, and commercial subsea operations, Dive-LD emphasizes endurance, modularity, and high-confidence autonomy, allowing it to operate independently for extended periods in environments where communications are limited or denied.
From a navigation and positioning standpoint, Dive-LD employs a high-accuracy aided Inertial Navigation System (INS) comparable in class to systems from Kearfott, iXblue, Northrop Grumman LITEF, or similar vendors. This INS is tightly coupled with a Doppler Velocity Log (DVL), pressure-based depth sensors, and GPS/GNSS when surfaced, enabling precise localization throughout a mission. When operating without GPS for extended durations, the vehicle supports acoustic navigation aiding such as Ultra-Short Baseline (USBL) and Long Baseline (LBL) positioning. For high-end or covert mission profiles, Dive-LD is architected to support advanced navigation techniques such as Terrain Referenced Navigation (TRN) and Magnetic Anomaly Navigation, allowing sustained submerged operations with estimated position error below 0.1 % of distance traveled (CEP50) over short unaided intervals.
The power system is based on a modular lithium-ion battery architecture, using high-energy-density, pressure-tolerant battery modules optimized for deep-water operation. Depending on mission configuration, battery capacity is estimated to range from tens of kilowatt-hours to well over 100 kWh, enabling multi-day endurance without surfacing. This modular approach allows operators to trade payload volume for endurance and simplifies maintenance, logistics, and future technology upgrades.
Structurally, Dive-LD uses a free-flooded, modular hull design that supports rapid integration of payload sections such as sonar arrays, ISR sensors, environmental instruments, or mission-specific equipment. Additive manufacturing techniques are leveraged to accelerate production, reduce cost, and enable fast iteration. To support scale, Anduril has established production capacity at its Rhode Island manufacturing facility, targeting output of up to 200 Dive-LD vehicles per year, positioning the platform not as a bespoke asset but as a mass-producible autonomous undersea system.