Donald Trump on Tuesday announced the opening of a new $6.6bn shipbuilding factory in Baltimore, partly funded by the US government but owned by Anduril Industries, a politically connected defense company.
Trump’s appearance at a currently unused shipyard in Sparrows Point is a boost to Anduril, whose founder, Palmer Luckey, is a major GOP campaign fundraiser. Luckey has hosted campaign fundraisers for at least 20 Republican politicians, including Trump, the Guardian reported in August. He has given $5.9m to Republican causes since 2017.
Last week, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, named Luckey, an outspoken supporter of autonomous warfare, as an adviser to the Pentagon’s recently launched “Project Meridian”, which is tasked to study the future of warfare.
At the event in Maryland, Trump called Luckey “a friend of mine” and a “brilliant guy”. Luckey was not at the event.
Anduril’s shipyard project is funded partly by $2.9bn from the US navy, along with $3.7bn project in private funding. Officials said the new factory, to be called “Arsenal Two”, will build torpedo tubes and other sections of Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack submarines.
Rapid ship construction is a priority for Trump, whose administration has promoted a future “golden fleet”.
Trump said US taxpayers would “receive a 40% stake” in the shipyard. It is unclear what he meant, and whether the US government is taking an equity share in the company, as it has in some other firms.
Anduril said the operation would not be ready to produce ship parts until 2030.
While the company has manufactured smaller unmanned maritime systems, it will not say how many have been deployed. The firm has never before played any known role in the highly specialized manufacture of crewed submarines.
Officials mingled at the dusty industrial site with dozens of uniformed sailors from the USS Billings, a shallow-water combat ship. One naval specialist at the rally said he wanted to see the president but was more anxious to return home after deployment in Caribbean. He said the ship had been scheduled to return home to Florida but was rerouted to the event.
The acting navy secretary, Hung Cao, called the plant a “partnership between the navy and Anduril that breaks through bureaucratic red tape”. He paid Anduril extraordinary praise, in spite of the company’s lack of a history in submarine-building.
“Anduril will be making these systems for you!” he promised the sailors sitting in front of him.
And he repeatedly embraced Trump’s new term for artificial intelligence, calling it “super intelligence”.
In a bizarre warning to adversaries, Cao said: “Piss us off [and] we’ll sneak into your country in the middle of the night and snatch you and your wife while you sleep in your beds.”
