President Donald Trump yesterday announced Arsenal-2, a new software-defined shipyard backed by a $3.7 billion private investment by Anduril Industries. The facility will manufacture critical components for the Virginia-class submarine, adding significant new capacity to America's submarine industrial base in support of the Navy's effort to increase attack submarine production.
The U.S. Navy awarded Anduril a contract of up to $2.9 billion tied to on-time, high-quality submarine production.
General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding build Virginia-class submarines as part of a complex manufacturing enterprise. Meeting domestic fleet requirements and AUKUS commitments will require substantial growth across that enterprise, including new suppliers, infrastructure, workforce and production capacity, according to Anduril.
Arsenal-2 will build complex components and large-scale assemblies of the Virginia-class submarine and deliver them to Electric Boat and Newport News Shipbuilding for final assembly.
The factory will be built at Tradepoint Atlantic in Baltimore County, Maryland, where the project is expected to create 3,100 direct jobs and support more than 11,000 indirect jobs. The site will drive $2 billion in annual economic output, including an estimated $312 million in wages each year.
Permitting and site preparation will begin immediately, with construction starting as soon as the necessary approvals are in place. Initial operations are expected to come online in 2030, with production scaling progressively thereafter.
Arsenal-2 is designed around software-defined production and advanced manufacturing. At more than 2 million square feet, the facility will be purpose-built on a 187-acre site.
The shipyard's layout is optimized for production. Reduced distances between fabrication, assembly, testing and integration areas eliminate the staging bottlenecks that slow conventional yards. A functional 1,200-foot graving dock and multimodal road and rail access support large-scale component movement. High-bay assembly halls, adjacent fabrication areas and reconfigurable production lines allow the yard to shift rapidly as Navy requirements evolve.
ArsenalOS, Anduril's industrial software platform, will provide the yard and its production systems with a digital backbone. It will connect fabrication workflows, outfitting sequences, material movement, inspection protocols and documentation requirements in a single system.
Digital work instructions, embedded quality controls, modern sensing and automation will support the expertise of welders, pipefitters, electricians, shipfitters, inspectors and other skilled trades.
In parallel with Arsenal-2's construction, Anduril is already standing up the manufacturing capabilities that will anchor operations at the new yard. Anduril will make Virginia-class submarine components at a new 160,000-square-foot facility in Orange County, California, purpose-built to support key submarine construction processes and SUBSAFE-qualified production qualification efforts.
The Orange County facility gives Anduril a two-year operational head start to develop and validate manufacturing methods, production workflows and quality systems before Arsenal-2 comes online. It will support prototyping and production of Virginia-class test assets and critical maritime components, including torpedo tubes, while allowing Anduril to recruit and train the early workforce on the systems and standards that will scale at Arsenal-2. Once Arsenal-2 comes online, the Orange County facility will continue supporting broader maritime manufacturing efforts across Anduril's industrial network. This is the same approach Anduril has used at Arsenal-1 in Ohio.
Arsenal-2 is also part of a broader network of Anduril production facilities spanning the U.S. and allied nations — including Arsenal-1 in the Columbus, Ohio region; its maritime factory at Quonset Point, Rhode Island; its Ghost Shark factory in Sydney, Australia; a rocket motor facility in McHenry, Mississippi; and more than 15 additional production sites.
