The concept of drone swarms is taking on new significance as major militaries shift from viewing large numbers of autonomous land, sea, and air vehicles as a threat to treating them as a strategic asset. Navies, in particular, are moving toward hybrid fleets that contain both crewed and autonomous vessels as a way of monitoring much larger areas, freeing up conventional ships for higher-priority missions, and deploy drones as weapon platforms and force multipliers.

The problem is that there's a bit of a bottleneck to be overcome. It's one thing to want a new fleet with hundreds of surface and underwater drones. It's something entirely else to actually get your hands on enough of them fast enough to make a difference.

It's with this in mind that the Navy is pursuing the CAMP project, which is tasked with rapidly prototyping and fielding large autonomous submarines to bridge the gap that currently exists with undersea logistics and long-range strike capabilities. More important, it's to do so as fast as possible.

The Dive-XL platform was selected because it appears well suited to software-defined undersea warfare, with a design that can be scaled for mass production while remaining large enough to deploy smaller autonomous systems.

A key feature is Anduril's departure from traditional pressure-hull construction. Instead, the Dive-XL uses a modular, free-flooding design, with sensitive components sealed inside internal canisters. Eliminating the pressure hull reduces both cost and weight, while allowing faster manufacturing and easier customization.

Drawing on lessons learned from the Royal Australian Navy's Ghost Shark program, the all-electric Dive-XL is fairly large as drone submarines go, with a length of 27 ft (11 m) and a beam of 7 ft (2 m). It's rated to a depth of about 20,000 ft (6,000 m) and has a range of 2,000 nm (2,301 miles, 3,704 km) and a demonstrated submergence time of 100 hours over a 10-day period.

In addition, the platform is designed to fit neatly inside a standard 4-ft shipping container and can be airlifted by a C-17 or similar transport. The modular design allows for three standard payload modules to be installed or one extra-large module, enabling missions such as Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR), mine countermeasures, anti-submarine warfare, and undersea cable and pipeline inspection.

However, its party piece is the ability to launch smaller drones like the Copperhead AUV or the Seabed Sentry monitoring robot.

According to Andruil, a long-duration operational demonstration is scheduled within the next four months.