Underwater, a sea change of revolutionary but quiet proportions is quietly unfolding. Navies are increasingly turning to unmanned platforms that supplement their navies but do a lot, a lot more—they’re starting to recast the projection of naval power. Leading this revolution are extra-large unmanned undersea vehicles, or XLUUVs. Unlike the early small drones, they are giants of very capable machines for endurance and multi-mission capabilities. The US Navy’s Orca XLUUV leads the pack in a platform that marries autonomy, persistence, and power in a submarine that does not require a crew to conduct missions, once the province of manned ships.
The Orca program was born out of a challenge: how to be in contested waterways without endangering sailors. Boeing and Lockheed Martin were tasked in 2017 with coming up with concepts that had the potential to make this a reality. Boeing’s engineering prowess on the underwater aspect ultimately gave its design the upper hand, and the program has since made progress with constant development. By the late part of 2023, its prototype, XLE0, had undergone its first tests, and the first operational model, XLE1, began sea trials after production at Marina Shipyard. What is special about the Orca is how large and how long it will last.
Close to 85 feet in length, it rivals some of the original World War II subs and can dive to around 11,000 feet. Its hybrid propulsion system—marine diesel engine and advanced batteries—gives it the ability to spend up to several months at sea on a single deployment, traveling over 6,000 nautical miles.
This means that it does not need to be refueled to be sent out, using an advanced navigation system that uses Doppler velocity logs, inertial navigation, depth tracking, and GPS during flight, which gives precision even when normal signals are lost. Other than its long life, the actual strength of Orca is its carrying capacity.
Its 34-foot bay module can carry up to 8 tons of gear, and doubles as a launching area for medium-sized UUVs, a swarm of small drones, or for specialized payloads. It is flexible to the extent that it can be configured to carry sensors, communications gear, or even weapons based on mission requirements.
As its open-architecture design allows, Orca can be quickly reconfigured to include mine countermeasures, anti-submarine surveillance, surveillance, or seabed operations. Sometimes, it might operate without the payload bay altogether, its form streamlined for duty. That flexibility makes Orca a round-dish breaker.
Employed—from the beach or mother ship—it might go out by itself, cross long oceans, linger for weeks, do its job, and come home without ever putting one sailor in jeopardy. That autonomy positions it to snoop behind the lines, to gather information undercover, or to make a delivery where regular submarines must be out of range. As it was described by one Navy man, Orca is not only augmenting the fleet, it’s a part of the fleet, and it introduces a different type of capability to complement manned submarines and ships.
The arrival of Orca heralds more than a new weapon system—it heralds a change in naval strategy. By serving as a mothership to lower-profile drones, it introduces new dimensions of flexibility and surprise to underwater warfare. The enemies will be unable to simply guess not just where a submarine is, but what it can do or does.
That is a complete departure from the older one big crewed subs design. The other countries are also in the process of constructing their XLUUVs, but America is ahead with Orca currently. Australia is developing Ghost Shark, Canada launched the Solus-XR, and the United Kingdom is developing its Herne project. They have differing power or propulsion systems, but none of them have yet reached the level of operational capability that Orca has started to exhibit.
Forward, Orca is not a submarine but an opening to the future. Its transition to service will shape the Navy’s future unmanned vehicles and establish the standard for machine and human sailor coexistence at sea.
It’s a new frontier where stealth and tenacity converge with autonomy to pursue missions too dangerous, too mundane, or too risky for human sailors. Its appearance is evidence that naval innovation is moving forward consistently, and whoever can explore the depths with unmanned technology will be a winner to some degree in the coming wars.
