The transition from prototype to production is rarely as simple as it sounds in procurement documents. But for Anduril Australia, the journey with Ghost Shark — the large autonomous underwater vehicle now in steady-state production for the Royal Australian Navy — represents something far more consequential than a contract milestone. It is the opening chapter of a fundamental redesign of how Australia thinks about maritime power.
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with David Goodrich, Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Anduril Australia and Asia Pacific, in Sydney. Goodrich leads Anduril’s growth and operations across Australia and the broader Indo-Pacific, bringing to the role a career spanning defence, infrastructure, and technology. The conversation ranged from the specifics of the Ghost Shark program to the broader strategic logic of what Australia is attempting to build and the risks if it fails to seize the moment.
From Prototype to Production at Scale
The most immediate news from the conversation concerns where the Ghost Shark program now stands. In September of last year, Anduril Australia was awarded a $1.7 billion contract to deliver Ghost Shark at scale. Three months after contract award, the company delivered its first production variant. As Goodrich put it plainly: “We are now in steady-state production.”
The numbers in the contract remain classified, but Goodrich was clear that the company is delivering “dozens and dozens” of Ghost Sharks under the agreement. What is publicly known is the program’s design philosophy: every single year, Ghost Shark will be updated and upgraded, in continuous partnership with Navy operators who set mission requirements and capability priorities.
This is a crucial distinction from the traditional acquisition model. The power of the program, as Goodrich explained, is not a fixed capability delivered on a schedule. It is a continuously evolving system driven by operational experience. “We do not design based on anything other than operational experience,” he said. “There is no other way.” The operators are not passive recipients of a finished product. They are the driving force behind what Ghost Shark becomes.
This philosophy mirrors what I have been arguing for many years about the difference between the kill chain approach — where platforms are acquired as exquisite, infrequently-upgraded systems — and the kill web approach, where adaptability, integration, and continuous software evolution are the core of capability. Goodrich acknowledged this directly, noting that discussions about production were the first thing on the agenda when we initially met. For those of us who have long argued for affordable mass working in hybrid combination with exquisite capabilities, it is genuinely significant to see a major program built from the outset around this philosophy.
The Hybrid Fleet and the Balance Being Recast
One of the most important threads in our conversation concerned what the Ghost Shark program represents in the context of Australia’s broader maritime posture. Goodrich was careful not to claim more clarity than currently exists, but he was emphatic that the fundamental direction is understood: “The numbers that we are producing to for the five-year contract will be vastly exceeded in the future. They will have to be.”
The balance between exquisite, crewed platforms and autonomous systems is being recast but we are at the very early stages of that transition. It is worth being precise about what “hybrid” means in this context. It does not mean autonomous systems replace capital ships. It means the fleet of the future will be organized around the integration of manned and unmanned assets, with each type performing the missions it is best suited for and each enhancing the effectiveness of the other.
Goodrich was direct about this: “Of course there’ll be no all-autonomous force. It’s always a hybrid.” The analytical question is where the balance should be set and that question cannot be answered in the abstract. It can only be answered through operational experience, mission assignment, and the kind of iterative learning that a continuous-update program like Ghost Shark is uniquely positioned to generate.
The Hull Gap as Strategic Opportunity
Perhaps the most important framing to emerge from our conversation concerns what I have been calling the “hull gap” or the period in which Australia will not have anywhere near the number of capital ships it will eventually require, as legacy vessels age out and the new frigates and AUKUS submarines are still years from delivery. This gap is often framed as a problem, a period of strategic vulnerability to be endured.
I want to reframe it as an opportunity and Goodrich agreed. The hull gap, if seized intelligently, is a historic window for reinventing how Australia’s maritime fleet operates. Rather than simply waiting for the new hulls to arrive and then reverting to a replacement-fleet logic, the ADF and the Navy have the chance to spend the next five to ten years developing operational doctrine, acquiring practical experience, and building institutional knowledge around the integration of autonomous and manned maritime assets. If that work is done, then when the Mogami-class frigates and the AUKUS submarines do arrive, they will be coming into a force that already understands how to operate in a hybrid fleet concept, not discovering it for the first time.
Goodrich expressed confidence that this journey has begun. Senior Navy commanders and fleet leaders understand what is needed. The goal, as he described it, is not to create an autonomous systems unit as a “special snowflake” off to one side while the “real” Navy continues as before. The intent is integration: Ghost Shark as a normal part of fleet business, not a laboratory curiosity. “Royal Australian Navy has got it,” he said. “Fleet command has got it.”
But the challenge of realizing this opportunity cannot be underestimated. It requires, as I put it to Goodrich and as he immediately confirmed, both operational redesign and acquisition redesign and the two must happen together, driven by the operational voice rather than the acquisition voice. “The operational voice needs to be louder than the acquisition voice,” he said. “At the moment it is always the acquisition voice that has the volume and controls what happens. Reform in that area is absolutely crucial, and I don’t see it happening at the speed it needs to.”
Enterprise Transformation and the People Problem
There is a dimension of this challenge that goes beyond organizational charts and procurement regulations. Goodrich raised it with characteristic directness: to redesign the enterprise, you need to bring new types of people into it. If the same people with the same mental frameworks continue to fill the same roles, you get the same enterprise printed again. This is not a small point. It is arguably the central challenge of military transformation.
The Australian Defence Force is a small force by global standards. Australia is a small country by population. Its defence budget, while growing and the recent budget increases have been welcomed and are significant remains modest relative to the major powers it must deter or work alongside. In that context, every decision about where to invest, which capabilities to prioritize, and how to organize institutional learning matters enormously.
The external lessons from Ukraine and from the recent conflict involving Iran are instructive here. What they demonstrate, above all, is the exceptional importance of adaptability — operational adaptability and design adaptability, pursued at speed. Goodrich agreed with this framing entirely. The force that learns faster, adjusts faster, and integrates new capabilities faster will have an asymmetric advantage that no amount of exquisite but slowly-upgraded hardware can fully compensate for.
A Word on Public Discourse
One element of this conversation that I want to highlight concerns the public narrative around Ghost Shark and autonomous maritime systems more broadly. As operational and manufacturing capabilities develop, there is a need for some form of public discourse to accompany that progress, not to compromise operational security or hand adversaries a road map, but to ensure that the Australian public understands what is being built on their behalf and why it matters.
This is not a trivial challenge. There is a real tension between transparency and operational security, and Goodrich acknowledged it clearly. But a mysterious force operating without any public rationale is a force whose political sustainability is fragile. The ADF and the government will need to find a way to articulate, at an appropriate level of generality, what these systems are doing for Australia’s security and why the investment is sound. That articulation will itself be part of building the public confidence that sustains the long-term program.
The Stakes
The Ghost Shark program is genuinely significant, not just as a capability, but as a proof of concept for a new way of building and sustaining military systems. Anduril Australia has delivered on what it promised, which matters: it has given the government confidence that backing this company produces results. The $1.7 billion contract, the production milestone, the continuous upgrade architecture, these are real achievements in a domain where real achievements are rare.
But the larger significance lies in what comes next. The next five to ten years — the hull gap period — represent a one-off strategic opportunity to reinvent Australian maritime power. If the ADF, the Navy, and the government treat this period as merely a difficult interlude before the “real” fleet arrives, the opportunity will be lost. If they treat it as a design laboratory, an operational proving ground, and a period of genuine enterprise transformation, Australia may emerge from it with a maritime capability that is genuinely suited to the threat environment of the 2030s and beyond.
The preconditions for that outcome are being laid. As Goodrich put it: “We have started that journey.” The question is whether the institutional momentum, the operational voice, the acquisition reform, and the public narrative can be brought together at the speed the strategic moment demands.
That is not a question for Anduril to answer alone. It is a question for Australia.
Note: This is the first of a five part series on the hull gap as a strategic opportunity.