Australia’s Speartooth submarine drone enters U.S. service

An Australian-built submarine drone just crossed the Pacific. C2 Robotics commissioned and christened its Speartooth Large Uncrewed Undersea Vehicle in a formal ceremony marking the first delivery of the platform to the United States.

Rather than the traditional bottle of champagne swung by a dignitary, Speartooth was christened by a robotic arm — with a human operator in the loop, per C2 Robotics’ official announcement. The symbolic choice was intentional. Human-on-the-loop is not just an aesthetic preference for C2 Robotics; it describes the operational philosophy baked into Speartooth’s design. The system is built to act autonomously across intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and strike missions while keeping a human decision-maker connected to the process.

The ceremony was officiated by Captain Josh Fagan, the U.S. Naval Attaché based in Canberra, serving as Guest of Honour and sponsor’s representative. Representing the Director General of Maritime Integrated Capabilities — the Royal Australian Navy office that oversees the RAN’s autonomous systems program — was Captain Tony Miskelly RAN. C2 Robotics team members and suppliers were also in attendance, per the company’s statement.

Troy Duggan, CEO of C2 Robotics, framed the moment explicitly in terms of both program maturity and alliance depth. “This is a proud and important step for our company,” Duggan said in the company’s announcement. “We don’t typically conduct christening ceremonies for all of our boats, but this moment reflects the maturity of the Speartooth program and the strength of our partnership with the United States.” He also signaled that the program is moving fast: “The LUUV program is incredibly fast paced with payload options and mission roles continuously expanding,” Duggan said.

The platform being delivered to the United States is built around a design philosophy that C2 Robotics has described as “Small, Smart, Many” — a deliberate counter to the logic of large, expensive, singular undersea platforms. Speartooth is engineered for scalable, cost-effective undersea capability, with a modular payload architecture that allows it to be reconfigured for different mission sets without structural modification. Its 8-meter hull, built from composite materials, carries customizable payload bays for sensing, munitions, and mission-specific equipment. Propulsion combines a hybrid lithium-ion and diesel engine with an electric propeller, enabling an operational depth of 2,000 meters and a range of 2,000 kilometers, as previously reported by The Defense Post. The smaller size and lower unit cost are designed to allow it to operate in contested environments and generate force mass — numbers and presence — in ways that conventional submarines cannot.

The Speartooth program has been developed in close collaboration with the Australian Department of Defence, which has funded successive tranches of development work. The platform participated in the Royal Australian Navy’s Exercise Autonomous Warrior 23, where the Generation 2 Speartooth demonstrated logistics systems, autonomous delivery of effects, and mission accuracy, as Naval News reported at the time. Thales Australia subsequently announced a partnership to integrate its sovereign sonar sensor technology into the platform, with all sensors and electronics to be designed and produced at Thales’ Acoustics Centre of Excellence in Rydalmere, Sydney, according to The Defense Post. That integration aims to enhance long-range autonomous navigation with greater safety, reliability, and precision.

The U.S. delivery comes after C2 Robotics announced its first international export sales in November 2025, without publicly naming the customer at the time. The commissioning ceremony now confirms the United States as a recipient, with Captain Fagan’s attendance as the U.S. Naval Attaché providing the formal American imprimatur. C2 Robotics’ Chief Technology Officer Dr. Tom Loveard had described the unnamed export customer in November as “an organisation that is keen to get this capability into the hands of their people as soon as possible to see what autonomous systems can bring to undersea operations,” per the company’s media release. The philosophy he described — get it in the water, learn from it, adapt — aligns precisely with how the U.S. military has increasingly approached autonomous systems evaluation in recent years.

C2 Robotics also signaled that the U.S. delivery is not the end of its international expansion. The company’s announcement noted that a further announcement on overseas sales would be released soon involving its European partner, Eurobotics GmbH — suggesting that Speartooth’s customer base is expanding on both sides of the Atlantic.