The Australian government has committed $1.7bn to acquire a fleet of “dozens” – the exact number is classified – of Ghost Shark submarines for the Royal Australian Navy.
What is a Ghost Shark submarine?
A Ghost Shark is an extra-large autonomous undersea vehicle (XL-AUV), essentially an uncrewed submarine. They are designed and built in Australia.
The government says the Ghost Shark will provide the Royal Australian Navy with a “cost-effective, stealthy, long-range, trusted undersea capability that can conduct persistent and disruptive intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and strike” operations. It can undertake long-range, long-duration missions without surfacing.
How many Ghost Sharks is Australia getting and what can they do?
The government is being deliberately opaque about how many it will buy, how they will be deployed and the Ghost Shark’s capabilities.
Ministers are only saying the navy will have “dozens”, and that the Ghost Sharks have a “very long range”. They can be deployed from warships, or launched off the coast.
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“This is a world-class capability that has the capability to conduct intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and strike at extremely long distances from the Australian continent,” said the defence industry minister, Pat Conroy, emphasising the final point. “Let me repeat that: we will have the ability to strike at extremely long distances from the continent of Australia.”
The government has also emphasised that this is a capability that has undergone significant testing, and is available more or less immediately.
Unlike Australia’s planned nuclear submarine fleet, which will not come into service until next decade at the very earliest (and the Australian-built Aukus subs not until the 2040s), the Ghost Sharks will be in the service of the navy from January 2026.
The $1.7bn price is also a fraction of the forecast cost of Aukus, which stands at $368bn to the 2050s.
Why is Australia buying these drone submarines?
The future of warfare, on land, in the air, and at sea, will be increasingly autonomous.
Militaries around the world are pouring vast resources into autonomous technologies: they are far cheaper to build and run than crewed platforms, can be deployed at scale, and without human crew, are expendable.
A terrestrial example is the revolutionary use of cheap but lethal armed drones by Ukraine to counter Russia’s invasion. Small armed drones worth a few hundred dollars are disabling tanks that cost tens of millions, halting entire offensives.
Countries are also dedicating intense effort to improving submarine detection technologies, undermining the stealth capability that has been crewed submarines’ decisive advantage for decades.
Is there geopolitics involved here?
Undoubtedly.
The Australian government’s announcement comes a week after China held a massive military parade in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, showcasing a vast array of hardware and technology, a global flexing of PLA military muscle.
And the announcement comes just weeks ahead of the prime minister, Anthony Albanese’s, visit to the US, for the UN General Assembly, but also a hoped-for meeting with Donald Trump.
Behind closed doors and publicly, the Trump administration has been insisting that Australia nearly double its defence spending to about $100bn a year, “as soon as possible” in the words of US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, citing what he said was a “real and potentially imminent” threat from China. The Ghost Sharks will be designed and built in Australia by Anduril Australia: its parent is a US company.
