DIU soliciting industry for supersized underwater drones

The Silicon Valley-headquartered Defense Innovation Unit is on the hunt for commercially available uncrewed underwater vehicles with “exceptional range,” according to officials.

DIU issued a solicitation to vendors this week via its commercial solutions opening acquisition pathway for a “combat autonomous maritime platform.” The move comes as the Navy is pursuing Project 33 and other initiatives to beef up its fleet with robotic platforms and prepare for a potential war with China in the Pacific region. Maritime drones are seen as a cost-effective means of boosting the sea service’s capacity and capabilities while reducing risks to sailors by keeping them out of harm’s way.

“To maximize operational effectiveness in contested environments, the United States military requires enhanced capabilities for deploying large payloads across extended ranges. Current UUV capabilities present limitations in range and payload capacity, hindering the effective deployment of critical resources in certain operational scenarios,” officials wrote in the new solicitation. “The DoD seeks commercially available, demonstration-ready uncrewed systems that address these limitations, offering a scalable and cost-effective solution for long-range, high-capacity payload deployment.”

The CAMP program isn’t DIU’s first rodeo when it comes to UUVs. Last year, in partnership with the Navy, the organization awarded contracts to Anduril, Oceaneering International and Kongsberg Discovery to prototype large displacement unmanned underwater vehicles. However, the new CAMP platforms will be much bigger and have additional capabilities, a DIU spokesperson told DefenseScoop.

“These are an order of magnitude larger, much longer range, and carry even larger payloads. This is a different class of vehicle. For example, think of LDUUV as a sprinter van and CAMP as a moving truck,” the spokesperson said in an email. “These will be pier launched vs shipboard launched, based on anticipated size.”

The new solicitation isn’t being issued because the LDUUV prototypes didn’t meet expectations, according to DIU.

“Quite the opposite. We are building from the success from the LDUUV project, and attempting this with even larger and longer range UUVs,” the spokesperson said.

Officials want an autonomous system that can transit more than 1,000 nautical miles, go deeper than 200 meters underwater and release a variety of payloads of various sizes — including payloads that are 21 feet in length and 21 inches in diameter.

They also desire platforms that can communicate “across the air/water interface (acoustic and Radio Frequency)” and operate in GPS-denied environments, among other attributes.

Vendor responses are due May 1. DIU plans to move quickly into phase two — which is expected to start just four weeks after the close of the solicitation and include in-water live demonstrations of companies’ offerings.

Prototype other transaction agreements that are awarded may result in follow-on production contracts or agreements after successful prototype completion, according to DIU.

“The follow-on production contract or agreement will be available for use by one or more organizations within the Department of Defense. As a result, the magnitude of the follow-on production contract or agreement could be significantly larger than that of the Prototype OT agreement,” officials wrote.

Meanwhile, the Navy is pursuing other underwater drones, such as the extra-large UUV named Orca. That platform, built by Boeing, is an 85 ton, 85-feet-long unmanned diesel-electric submarine. Its design was inspired by Boeing’s Echo Voyager, which has a range of up to 6,500 nautical miles and can accommodate a modular payload section up to 34 feet in length, according to a Congressional Research Service report. However, the Orca differs in some respects to meet military requirements and it appears to be significantly larger than the Echo Voyager.

Construction of the Orca XLE-1 is complete, and developmental and operational testing of the system was slated to continue through the third quarter of this fiscal year.

“Orca, and other platforms like her, are an important step forward as we drive towards our future hybrid fleet, which is going be composed of manned and unmanned platforms. It’s a hybrid fleet that we know we will need to maintain our warfighting advantage,” then Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti said late last year while touring Boeing’s manufacturing facility, according to a Navy release.

Franchetti was later fired as CNO by President Donald Trump in February along with several other senior military officers. Since then, Adm. James Kilby has been performing the duties of CNO as observers wait for Trump to announce his pick for a new service chief.