U.S. Defense Innovation Unit selects partners for autonomous undersea and drone systems

The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) of the U.S. Department of Defense has chosen Kongsberg and Oceaneering International to work on the Combat Autonomous Maritime Platform (CAMP) program, which will develop an extra‑large uncrewed undersea vehicle (XLUUV) for future Navy missions. The partnership will focus on concept definition, system architecture and design trade studies, emphasizing modularity, interoperability and rapid integration, with a design expected by the third quarter of this year.

Separately, DIU has also selected Kansas City‑based Tesseract Ventures for the Containerized Autonomous Drone Delivery System (CADDS) prototype project. Tesseract will demonstrate its NOMAD modular platform, which enables a single operator to manage multiple autonomous drones from containerized units, aiming to reduce personnel requirements and increase operational flexibility for the U.S. military in remote or austere environments. Successful prototype demonstrations could lead to production contracts without further competition.