The Unsolved Problem of Subsea Communications
This March, the Defense Innovation Unit and the Navy picked Anduril’s Dive-XL for a program called CAMP. It imposes hard requirements for systems that are already hard enough to build, in a place that’s already hostile enough as it is: cross 1,000+ nautical miles without surfacing, operate below 200 m, hold a course where GPS can’t reach, and set payloads down on the sea floor. Anduril is now spinning up a line at Quonset Point, Rhode Island to turn out dozens of these things a year. There’s one requirement that the Navy and DIU conspicuously left out, and we can’t fault them, as it’s an issue that nobody has been able to solve. Once a system like Dive-XL…. dives, you can’t really reach it.
