Leidos Australia launches into Australia-Pacific maritime autonomy domain

Leidos has commenced the Australian build of Sea Archer, a next-generation small uncrewed surface vessel (USV). This marks a major step forward in bringing Leidos’ proven autonomous technology and maritime systems portfolio to the Indo-Pacific region while supporting AUKUS objectives and the Australian Defence Force’s mission needs.

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 heart of Sea Archer is Leidos’ advanced autonomy platform, LAVA, which enables high-speed, long-range, and smart mission execution across diverse maritime environments. Seamlessly integrated with Leidos’ broader battle management technologies — including ADEPT and AlphaMosaic, which harness AI to support distributed, autonomous fleet operations — Sea Archer embodies the future of naval capability: intelligent, adaptable and affordable.

Built for speed, endurance and multi-mission payloads, 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.

Leidos Australia’s technical team will lead the integration of its autonomy software platform, which has already been successfully deployed across 12 different USV platforms.