Anduril Dives Into Submarine Construction With New Baltimore Plant
As part of its overall effort to boost America’s flagging shipbuilding capacity, the Trump administration on Tuesday announced that Anduril is building a new two-million-square-foot facility in Baltimore designed to help speed up the production of Virginia class nuclear-powered attack submarines. The plant, dubbed Arsenal-2, will eventually produce components like torpedo tubes and spherical air flasks, which will then be sent to the two shipyards that build nuclear submarines, General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding. Anduril’s plan to build complex submarine components is a huge leap for a company with a shipbuilding portfolio consisting of a limited number of smaller craft.
The submarine component plant announcement was made as the Navy is struggling to keep up with its goal of producing two of these boats per year amid a wider issue of construction and delivery delays across the service. However, it will be years before the first Anduril-produced components are placed on a submarine, with no specific timelines for that effort yet established, an industry official told us. We will discuss that in greater detail later in this story.
A Virginia class submarine under construction. (HII) HII
“Today’s $6.6 billion investment represents the president’s commitment to restoring American maritime dominance by constructing new vessels in communities like Baltimore and across the country,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told a group of reporters, including from TWZ, at a Tuesday morning press conference.
Those funds include a $3.7 billion investment from Anduril to build and staff the new facility and a contract worth up to $2.9 billion awarded to Anduril by the Navy to produce the components.
“The Virginia class submarine program is one of the most critical warfighting capabilities that our nation has that guarantees deterrence every single day,” Anduril President and Chief Strategy Officer Chris Brose stated. “It is also a program that has been challenged in terms of the ability to meet the Navy’s requirements. So we’re, as a nation, not necessarily where we need to be, and that’s not because of our shipyard workers.”
The Navy currently has 26 Virginia class boats, with two more expected to be commissioned next spring, a senior administration official told reporters on Tuesday. Another 31 vessels are still needed to meet the Navy’s overall plan to have 59 Virginia class boats.
The USS Idaho (SSN 799) pulls into Submarine Base New London in Groton, Conn. for the first time on Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. When commissioned, it became the 26th Virginia class attack submarine and fifth U.S. Navy ship to be named for the Gem State. (U.S. Navy Photo by John Narewski) John Narewski
However, while the Navy has been buying them at a rate of two per year from Fiscal Year 2011 through Fiscal Year 2024, “the actual Virginia class production rate has never reached 2.0 boats per year, and since 2022 has been limited by shipyard and supplier firm workforce and supply chain challenges to about 1.1 to 1.2 boats per year, resulting in a growing backlog of boats procured but not yet built,” according to a Congressional Research Service (CRS) report published in January. “Key drivers of the drop in production include workforce challenges, first-time quality, material and supplier delays, and lead ship issues associated with the Virginia Payload Module [VPM] variant. The Navy is working closely with the shipbuilders to drive improvement throughout the Virginia enterprise.”
The VPM is an 84-foot hull extension that contains four additional large vertical tubes designed to launch Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles, Intermediate-Range Conventional Prompt Strike (IRCPS) hypersonic missiles, and other payloads. You can read more about the Navy’s VPM plans in our story here.
A briefing slide with details about the Virginia Payload Module (VPM) that will be added to the Block V Virginia class submarines. USN
Adding to the strain on production and delivery, Australia is set to get one new-build Virginia class boat and two from the U.S. Navy’s fleet under the 2021 trilateral AUKUS nuclear submarine acquisition deal with the United States and the United Kingdom.
In May, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle told Congress that the service would meet its two-boat-a-year delivery rate by 2032.
During Tuesday’s press conference, officials laid out claims that the new Anduril plant will address several of the issues that have slowed down the construction and delivery of these submarines.
“If you look at this in terms of capacity, the potential based on the area and what Anduril plans to do is to add about 9 million hours of labor a year at this facility,” stated a senior administration official, who, like others on Tuesday spoke on condition of anonymity. “That would be the equivalent of about a 15% increase, and so that would be directly translatable to Virginia class submarine production. So having those torpedo tubes earlier would let us move production of current Virginia submarines under construction faster.”
Adm. Frank Caldwell, Jr., director of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, examines a torpedo tube aboard the Virginia class fast attack submarine USS Illinois (SSN 786) during Ice Exercise (ICEX) 2022. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Alfred Coffield/Released) Petty Officer 1st Class Alfred Coffield
In addition, Anduril plans to draw on a huge potential workforce to staff the plant.
“If you basically draw like a one-hour radius around the Baltimore County area, there are millions and millions of people who could potentially contribute and work at this shipyard, and that is a huge selling point for us,” an industry official suggested.
The greater Baltimore area. (Google Earth)
Beyond producing components like torpedo tubes, Anduril aspires to eventually build “full ship secti
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