The Trump administration is going big on submarines. In a major push to expand America's undersea-building capacity, the administration has tapped defense technology company Anduril to stand up a massive new 2-million-square-foot shipyard outside Baltimore — a $6.6 billion bet on rebuilding the Navy's production muscle.
The numbers tell the story. The effort combines $3.7 billion in private investment from Anduril with up to $2.9 billion in Navy purchases. The facility is expected to add roughly 9 million labor hours annually, increase submarine production capacity by about 15%, and create more than 14,000 direct and indirect jobs. For Baltimore — a city that knows shipbuilding in its bones — it is a revival story with a modern twist.
The target is a bottleneck that has dogged the Navy for years. U.S. shipyards are currently producing roughly 1.3 Virginia-class attack submarines per year, well below the Navy's target of two. Every fraction of a boat matters: attack submarines are the quiet workhorses of American sea power — the platforms that shadow adversaries, protect carrier groups, and give the United States its undersea edge. Falling short on production means falling behind on deterrence.
That is where Anduril comes in. The company, founded by Palmer Luckey and built around software-first defense technology, has made a name for itself doing things the legacy defense primes said could not be done — faster, cheaper, and with Silicon Valley velocity. Putting Anduril at the center of submarine construction is a deliberate signal: the administration wants the shipbuilding industrial base rebuilt with new-economy speed, not old-economy timelines.
The strategic backdrop is China. Beijing's navy has grown into the largest in the world by hull count, and the undersea domain is where the United States still holds a decisive technological advantage — one that only matters if it can be sustained. More Virginia-class boats in the water, faster, is the administration's answer.
Critics will ask the obvious questions: whether a software company can deliver steel-hull submarines at scale, whether the private-investment numbers hold up, and whether the jobs and capacity projections survive contact with reality. Big defense promises have a way of shrinking between announcement and delivery.
But the administration's framing is clear: the old pace was a choice, and they are choosing differently. If Arsenal-2 delivers even close to its targets, it will mark the largest injection of new submarine-building capacity in a generation — and a template for how this White House plans to rebuild American hard power.