Anduril Industries has secured a contract worth up to 2.9 billion dollars with the United States Navy to accelerate submarine production, announced just days after co-founder Palmer Luckey was appointed to a Pentagon future-warfare initiative alongside Elon Musk and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
The contract covers components for the Virginia-class submarine programme. Alongside that government award, Anduril is committing 3.7 billion dollars of its own capital to build a new, two-million-square-foot shipyard at Sparrows Point, near Baltimore, Maryland. The facility is targeted to begin operations in 2030 and is expected to create around 3,100 jobs. A smaller, 160,000-square-foot site in Orange County, California, will manufacture specific parts including torpedo tubes.
Reporting by 10Bmnews notes that Anduril president and chief strategy officer Chris Brose framed the Sparrows Point site as a chance to fundamentally rethink how a shipyard is designed and operated, something he suggested the existing industrial base is not in a position to do. The plant will initially focus on feeding the Virginia-class supply chain, with ambitions to grow into producing larger sections of the submarines over time. Those vessels are currently built by General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Industries; General Dynamics separately landed a 76.6 billion dollar Navy award this summer.
The timing sharpens a wider conversation about defence technology companies and their expanding influence in Washington. Luckey's appointment to Project Meridian, which Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth described as an effort to study the future of warfare, places the Anduril founder at the centre of Pentagon planning at precisely the moment his company is competing for significant government contracts. SpaceX, whose chief executive Musk sits on the same initiative, secured a 4.16 billion dollar contract in June to help the military track airborne targets via satellite.
Venture capital connections deepen the picture further. Marc Andreessen, whose firm Andreessen Horowitz is a major backer of Anduril, was appointed to the Pentagon's defence policy board this summer alongside Blake Masters of Thiel Capital.
Anduril built its name on autonomous drones and unmanned systems, making the move into conventional submarine shipbuilding a meaningful expansion of scope. The Sparrows Point investment, if it proceeds as planned, would represent one of the most substantial new shipyard developments in the United States in decades.
