Anduril and the US Navy announced Tuesday a $6.6 billion public-private partnership to build Arsenal-2, a new shipyard in Baltimore County, Maryland, that will manufacture components for Virginia-class submarines. The company will invest $3.7 billion in private capital, and the Navy has awarded Anduril a contract worth up to $2.9 billion, with payments tied to production outcomes.
The facility will be located at Tradepoint Atlantic on a 187-acre site and span more than 2 million square feet. Anduril said permitting and site preparation will begin immediately, with construction starting once approvals are in place. Initial operations are expected to come online in 2030, with production scaling progressively thereafter.
Anduril said the shipyard will create 3,100 direct jobs and more than 11,000 indirect jobs. White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said the project will drive $2 billion in annual economic output.
The company described Arsenal-2 as a “modern shipbuilding system built around software-defined production and advanced manufacturing.” Its industrial software platform, ArsenalOS, will serve as the facility’s “digital backbone,” connecting fabrication workflows, outfitting sequences, material movement, inspection protocols, and documentation requirements in a single system, according to Anduril.
Anduril plans to initially produce basic modules such as torpedo tubes before expanding into more complex components, including full sections of the vessels such as the bow. The components will be delivered to General Dynamics Electric Boat and HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding, which jointly build Virginia-class submarines, for final assembly.
The company is also standing up a 160,000-square-foot facility in Orange County, California, to begin manufacturing submarine parts, including torpedo tubes, ahead of Arsenal-2’s opening. Anduril said the California facility will provide a two-year operational head start to develop and validate manufacturing methods, production workflows, and quality systems.
A senior administration official said Arsenal-2 would add roughly 9 million hours of labor annually to the submarine industrial base, a 15 percent increase for Virginia-class production. The official said torpedo tubes are currently “a gating component that we need to be able to move forward with some of those Virginia-class submarines that are under construction,” and having them earlier would let the Navy move production faster.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle told the House Appropriations Committee in May that he anticipates industry will deliver two Virginia-class submarines annually by around 2032. The Navy’s shipbuilding plan, also released in May, said investing in the submarine industrial base is paramount to meeting those goals. As of June 2025, shipbuilders were producing Virginia-class submarines at a rate of one per year, according to a Government Accountability Office report released in July.
Chris Brose, Anduril’s president and chief strategy officer, said the company has been discussing the need for additional shipyard production capacity with the administration and Navy for nearly two years. “This is not about taking food off the plate of anybody. This is about putting more food on the table and being able to meet the requirements that our country has to produce more submarines,” he said.
Sources: Breaking Defense · DefenseScoop