Ultra Maritime and Anduril Demo Anti-UUV Capabilities at US Navy Lanternfish Exercise

Published on 24/07/2026 By Naval News Staff

Ultra Maritime and Anduril successfully demonstrated the capability of Seabed Sentry and Sea Spear to detect and classify advanced unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) during the U.S. Navy's 2026 Lanternfish exercise.

Ultra Maritime Press Release

In a major technological advancement for the protection of ports and critical infrastructure worldwide, Ultra Maritime successfully demonstrated a groundbreaking capability to detect and classify advanced unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) during the U.S. Navy's 2026 Lanternfish exercise.

The demonstration showcased the company's Sea Spear deployable sonar solution operating in a realistic port protection scenario, enabling the U.S. Navy and industry to evaluate emerging undersea technologies under operational conditions.

During the exercise, Sea Spear consistently detected, tracked and classified medium- and large-diameter UUVs. The demonstration validated the systems' ability to provide persistent acoustic sensing while transmitting track data to undersea command centers worldwide. The exercise also marked a significant milestone in the strategic partnership between Ultra Maritime and Anduril to accelerate the deployment of this transformative capability for covert anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and broader maritime defense missions.

Integrated with Anduril's Seabed Sentry, Sea Spear creates a distributed autonomous undersea network designed for scalable production and rapid deployment. The system can be clandestinely deployed from both manned and unmanned platforms, and provides persistent sensing in remote locations, maritime choke points and strategically important waterways. Depending on mission requirements, Sea Spear can be deployed as either a permanent installation or an attritable asset, offering a flexible, cost-effective approach to extending underwater awareness.

This demonstration builds on Ultra Maritime's investment in autonomous undersea sensing and validates the company's vision for scalable, distributed undersea surveillance. As undersea threats evolve and proliferate, Sea Spear provides U.S. and allied navies with a path to resilient networks of autonomous sensors across contested maritime environments.

Anduril Press Release

A rogue autonomous undersea vessel (AUV) moves through a channel. A sonar system deployed on Anduril's Seabed Sentry picks up its signature, hands the track to Seabed Sentry, and pushes the track into Lattice. Seconds later, an operator in the Navy's Unmanned Operations Center (UOC) sees it on a screen, delivered through the Navy's command-and-control (C2) system, and can take action to neutralize the threat.

That sequence played out repeatedly during Lanternfish, a multinational demonstration event that brought together autonomous underwater vehicle and subsea technology from Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Anduril's maritime team played a significant role in Lanternfish, proving out a counter-AUV kill chain from detection to alert.

What Anduril Demonstrated

Anduril paired Seabed Sentry with Ultra Maritime's Sea Spear, a lightweight deployable sonar system. Sea Spear consistently detected, tracked, and classified medium and large-diameter AUVs. Seabed Sentry ingested those tracks and published them to Lattice, Anduril's battle management platform. Lattice then passed the resulting operating picture through the Navy's cUxV system. The result: a live feed of every subsea and surface asset moving through the exercise area, visible to Navy operators in real time.

For this exercise, two outcomes mattered most:

• An operator-free alert system
• End-to-end system integration with the Navy's cUxV architecture

In operations, this meant that Seabed Sentry could detect an AUV and alert the Navy through its own C2 system without a human relaying the information by hand, all while Anduril's software chain frictionlessly worked within the confines of the Navy's relevant sensing and command technologies for this operating environment.

Check out video coverage of Anduril's Seabed Sentry and Ultra's Sea Spear during CNE 2026.