Image courtesy of Leidos
Leidos Australia has commenced local production of Sea Archer, a next-generation uncrewed surface vessel (USV), marking a significant milestone in the company’s expansion of autonomous maritime capabilities into the Indo-Pacific region.
The move into local manufacturing of autonomous vessels fast-tracks proven U.S. capability to Australia, harnessing Leidos’ 50-year heritage with the U.S. Navy and its record of more than 120,000 fully autonomous nautical miles at sea.
At the core of Sea Archer is Leidos’ autonomy platform, LAVA, designed for high-speed, long-range, and intelligent mission execution across complex maritime environments. The vessel integrates seamlessly with Leidos’ broader battle management technologies including ADEPT and AlphaMosaic, which use artificial intelligence to enable distributed, autonomous fleet operations.
Sea Archer can reach sprint speeds up to 40 knots and has a range of 1,500 nautical miles. With a flexible payload bay capacity of more than 900kg, Sea Archer can support a wide range of mission options, including strike, logistics resupply, ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance), and electromagnetic deception operations.
The Australian production of Sea Archer will use local capability across the supply chain from build to payload integration, autonomy software design and ship maintenance supporting a robust sovereign ecosystem, rapid production and sustainment. NSW Central Coast-based Oceans Rivers Lakes has been appointed to build the first aluminium vessel and construction is already underway.
Sea Archer is currently undergoing sea trials in the U.S. and is expected to be mission-ready by 2026.
epublished by The Sub Monitor as Indo Pacific 2025 event’s official media partner.
