Mr. Anduril on Tuesday won a contract worth up to $2.9 billion with the U.S. Navy to expand submarine production, days after CEO Palmer Lackey was appointed to the Pentagon’s Future Weapons Task Force.
The company is also investing $3.7 billion in the expansion of a new shipyard in Sparrows Point, Maryland, outside of Baltimore, which is expected to begin operations in 2030 and create approximately 3,100 jobs.
Anduril said the 2 million square foot facility will manufacture parts for Virginia-class submarines. Some parts, such as torpedo tubes, will be manufactured at a 160,000-square-foot facility in Orange County, California.
“This is about putting more food on the table and allowing our country to meet the requirements that we have to produce more submarines,” Chris Brose, Anduril’s president and chief strategy officer, said at a press conference.
The deal comes days after the Pentagon tapped Anduril co-founder Lackey to join a new effort called Project Meridian to identify and develop capabilities for future U.S. conflicts, raising questions about defense technology’s growing influence in Washington as the two companies compete for government contracts.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich space x CEO Elon Musk is also participating in the project. SpaceX and Anduril are both actively working with the U.S. government.
Defense technology companies and their leaders have seen their influence grow in Washington in recent months as President Donald Trump seeks to strengthen America’s military capabilities, including shipbuilding.
Marc Andreessen, whose venture firm Andreessen Horowitz has poured billions of dollars into defense technology companies including Anduril, was appointed to the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board this summer alongside Teal Capital’s Blake Masters.
Anduril is widely known for developing autonomous drones and aircraft. Over the summer, the Wall Street Journal reported that the company was in talks to build a drone boat on the property.
Brose said the facility focuses on the Virginia-class submarine program and marks the growing defense contractor’s foray into conventional shipbuilding.
“Our goal here is to become an important part of our flagship shipbuilding company’s supply chain and, hopefully, grow even larger over time,” he said. “And over time, we hope it grows into a very large part of the ship.”
This massive ship is being built by General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Industries. This summer, General Dynamics won a $76.6 billion Navy award to build submarines.
“This is an opportunity to really rethink how shipyards are built and how this work is done. And that’s something we don’t have the luxury of in our current industrial base,” Brose said.
