🚤 DIU opens $40M sprint for counter-air drone boats

Australia unveiled three new payloads for Anduril’s Ghost Shark extra-large autonomous undersea vehicle (XL-AUV): sea mines, remote supply caches, and Altius strike and reconnaissance drones.

The minelaying module deploys 12 mines, Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy said, and the payloads will also integrate on C2 Robotics’ Speartooth and Ocius’s Bluebottle.

Some payloads are being tested at an AUKUS Pillar II exercise in the US, moving Ghost Shark from surveillance toward offensive undersea warfare.

French firm Exail unveiled Neptis, a system that coordinates multiple uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) and sensors so navies can watch more ocean with fewer crewed ships.

Built on Exail’s new Oryx USV family, it targets anti-submarine warfare, undersea infrastructure protection, and counter-drone missions with AI-assisted decision support.

No customers or timelines are announced, but Exail brings 1.5 million nautical miles of USV operations and its UMIS mine countermeasures heritage to the pitch.

L3Harris won an $876M contract modification for the next engineering and manufacturing development phase of the Navy’s Next Generation Jammer Low Band (NGJ-LB).

NGJ-LB jams enemy radars and communications in lower-frequency bands from extended standoff ranges, with work covering test article pods, cybersecurity development, and tooling.

The award runs on an accelerated timeline as the Navy sustains the legacy AN/ALQ-99 while fielding its next airborne electronic attack capability.

The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) launched Sprint 2 of its Suitable Warfighting Adaptive Payloads (SWAP-USV) challenge, offering up to $40M for mature USVs fieldable within 120 days.

This round requires hard-kill counter-air effectors and clutter-resilient sensors to defeat cheap threats like explosive USVs and small drones the Navy now fights with exquisite platforms.

Sprint 3 begins spring 2027, and $200M is earmarked for follow-on prototype or production contracts once the 12-month competition ends.

The Pentagon signed a framework with BAE Systems to buy up to 25,000 Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System (APKWS) guidance kits a year for up to seven years.

The kits turn unguided 2.75-inch rockets into laser-guided munitions used by all four services as cheap drone interceptors, with a path to 35,000 a year for allies.

Congress must still approve and fund the multiyear buy, which follows similar framework deals this year to surge PAC-3 MSE and THAAD production.

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