The United States, United Kingdom, and Australia signed an agreement in Singapore on Friday to jointly develop sensor and weapons payloads for uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUVs), marking the first officially announced project under Pillar 2 of AUKUS, the alliance’s advanced-technology development track.
US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, UK Defence Secretary John Healey, and Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles signed the deal at the US Embassy during the Shangri-La Dialogue, with initial deliveries due in 2027. The UK government committed £150 million ($201.8 million) to the program.
AUKUS represents the biggest leap in Australia’s military capability in more than a century and we are delivering it alongside our close partners — the United States and the United Kingdom.
Great to meet with Secretary Hegseth and Secretary Healey in Singapore for our AUKUS… pic.twitter.com/elpf42kffC
— Richard Marles (@RichardMarlesMP) May 30, 2026
The agreement’s payload architecture sets it apart. Each AUKUS nation will first develop payloads focused on a distinct mission-effect category. These will then be made interchangeable across all three nations’ UUV fleets before the allies move to joint trilateral production, per a UK Ministry of Defence fact sheet.
AUKUS Pillar 2 is an important step toward accelerating the capabilities our nations need.
Dive-XL was built from day one so that the U.S., Australia, and the U.K. militaries can rapidly integrate and deploy advanced autonomous undersea capabilities and developing payloads.… https://t.co/N05i4SQfdq
— Anduril Industries (@anduriltech) May 31, 2026
The joint statement said the program will protect critical seabed infrastructure, deploy surveillance and strike capabilities, and bolster anti-submarine warfare, mine countermeasures, and electronic warfare.
Marles described undersea internet cables as “the arteries of modern civilization,” pointing to a series of attacks on subsea infrastructure over the past 18 months.
“This will rapidly give our forces the very most advanced battlefield technologies as together we produce a range of cutting-edge sensors and weapons systems for undersea drones,” Healey said.
The ministers also announced that Australia will streamline its Virginia-class submarine acquisition under AUKUS Pillar 1, purchasing three in-service US Navy boats rather than a previously planned mix of Block IV and new-build Block VII submarines.
The deal follows the UK’s April confirmation that it had tracked three Russian submarines near North Sea cables in a covert operation, and the subsequent recovery of a Chinese UUV in the Lombok Strait fitted with submarine-mapping sensors.
“For too long in AUKUS, we talked too much and delivered too little,” Healey said.
