By Clive Williams*
Australia’s Ghost Shark is an extra-large autonomous underwater vehicle (XL-AUV) being developed and manufactured by Anduril Australia for the Royal Australian Navy. It represents a shift towards uncrewed systems capable of conducting extended undersea missions without placing sailors at risk.
The program began in 2022 as a collaborative development effort involving Anduril, the Navy and Defence. In September 2025, the Australian Government committed A$1.7 billion over five years to acquire a fleet, maintain the vehicles and continue their development. The contract is expected to deliver dozens of vehicles, although the precise number has not been disclosed. A purpose-built manufacturing facility opened in Sydney in October 2025.
Ghost Shark is described as roughly the size of a school bus, with published estimates placing its length at around 10–12 metres. Its design is intended to facilitate transport and deployment from ships or containers, offering flexibility for a country with Australia’s extensive coastline and maritime interests.
Precise specifications, including range, speed, operating depth and endurance, have not been publicly established. Anduril’s related Dive-LD vehicle has demonstrated operations at depths of up to 6,000 metres and endurance of up to 10 days, but those figures should not be treated as confirmed Ghost Shark performance.
The vehicle’s modular architecture is an important feature. It is intended to accommodate different mission payloads, allowing the Navy to adapt its role as requirements change. The Australian Government has identified intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and strike among its intended functions.
The precise weapon configurations and payload capacities remain undisclosed, so claims about particular mine loads, aerial drone launches or other specialised payloads should be treated cautiously unless supported by specific evidence.
For intelligence collection, Ghost Shark offers considerable potential. A long-endurance autonomous vehicle could undertake persistent surveillance of strategically important waters, including maritime approaches to northern Australia and key sea lanes, while reducing the need to expose crewed submarines to routine or particularly hazardous missions.
Depending on its fitted sensors and assigned mission, an underwater vehicle of this class could contribute to seabed mapping, acoustic surveillance and the collection of information about maritime activity. Its effectiveness would depend on the quality of its sensors, the reliability of its autonomous navigation, and the ability to recover, transmit and analyse the data collected.
Such vehicles could complement Australia’s limited fleet of crewed submarines by extending the reach and persistence of its undersea surveillance. They would not necessarily replace the more capable sensors, communications facilities or mission flexibility available aboard a crewed submarine. Nor should their presence in an area automatically be equated with continuous, reliable intelligence coverage: underwater communications are constrained, and the retrieval of useful information can be as important as collecting it.
China is also developing large uncrewed underwater vehicles. The AJX-002, displayed during China’s September 2025 military parade, was identified as a mine-laying system. Open-source estimates put its length at approximately 18–20 metres, although its specifications and operational status remain uncertain. Another vehicle displayed at the parade, the HSU100, appears to be designed primarily for surveillance and intelligence collection.
These systems should be distinguished from two much larger Chinese uncrewed submarines, estimated at approximately 35 and 45 metres, which specialist open-source reporting indicates have been undergoing trials off Hainan. Their dimensions suggest the potential for substantial payload capacity and long-range operations, but their actual performance, autonomy and operational roles remain matters of assessment rather than established fact.
The American Boeing Orca provides another useful comparison. Boeing gives its overall length as 15.5 metres and its maximum range as up to 6,500 nautical miles, using a hybrid propulsion system. Its modular payload bay is intended to support a variety of undersea missions.
Ghost Shark is smaller on the available estimates, but its significance lies less in matching the largest vehicles on every performance measure than in the speed with which Australia has moved from collaborative development to a funded production programme.
Three prototypes were delivered under the initial development effort, and the subsequent contract established a pathway to fleet production.
There are important limitations. Publicly available information is insufficient to make reliable comparisons of Ghost Shark’s precise range, speed, payload capacity or acoustic signature with those of competing systems. Autonomous operation underwater presents difficult technical problems: satellite navigation is unavailable beneath the surface, communications are constrained, and vehicles must navigate and execute missions despite uncertainty about their surroundings.
Adversaries with sophisticated anti-submarine warfare capabilities may be able to detect, track or neutralise such systems. Their practical effectiveness will depend on reliability, counter-detection measures, mission planning and integration with other naval capabilities.
Ghost Shark should therefore be regarded as a complement to, rather than a replacement for, crewed submarines. Crewed platforms offer different advantages in onboard decision-making, communications, payload capacity and complex multi-mission operations. Autonomous vehicles offer the prospect of persistent surveillance and specialised tasks at lower risk to personnel, potentially allowing expensive crewed platforms to concentrate on missions for which their capabilities are indispensable.
For Australia, the programme is a significant experiment in developing sovereign undersea warfare capabilities at speed. Its ultimate value will depend not simply on how many vehicles are produced, but on how effectively they are integrated with other sensors and weapons, how well they perform in realistic operational conditions, and how much useful intelligence they can deliver.
In a region where maritime competition is intensifying, Ghost Shark offers the prospect of extending Australia’s undersea reach without relying exclusively on crewed submarines.
Whether that prospect becomes a decisive operational advantage remains to be demonstrated.
*Professor Clive Williams is a former Australian defence intelligence analyst
