Ghost Shark autonomous submarine to be manufactured in Sydney
The federal government has delivered on its promise of more rapid defence decision making, accelerating the manufacture of the Ghost Shark underwater autonomous vehicle for undersea surveillance, reconnaissance and strike at a new factory to be built in Australia.
The government has already spent $90 million along with Anduril Industries developing the very large autonomous submarine and invest another $20.1 million in a $40 million project to build infrastructure to transition the Ghost Shark program from prototype development to production.
Work began on the Ghost Shark only in May 2022, and with the first vessel to be built by 2025 marks an extraordinarily rapid R&D, prototyping, manufacture, purchase and deployment cysle – defence procurement for such complex systems has in the past taken as much as a decade.