American shipbuilder HII has announced plans to build four additional ROMULUS 151 uncrewed surface vessels at Breaux Brothers Enterprises in Louisiana, accelerating the programme toward initial production alongside the vessel already under construction, according to the company.
This is part of a shift from prototype to production for the ROMULUS programme, which HII describes as a modular family of AI-enabled uncrewed surface vessels designed to meet requirements for the US Navy, US Marine Corps, joint forces and allied partners. The platform is designed to support intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, mine countermeasures, strike operations, counter-uncrewed systems and the launch and recovery of unmanned underwater and aerial vehicles.
Andy Green, executive vice president of HII and president of its Mission Technologies division, said ROMULUS represented a shift in how unmanned capability was delivered to the fleet, describing the programme as combining shipbuilding experience, scalable manufacturing, proven autonomy and strong industry partnerships to move quickly from prototype to operational deployment. “The progress we are seeing today, including these initial production vessels, reinforces that we are on a disciplined path to deliver meaningful capability at speed and at scale,” he said.
Central to the acceleration is HII’s High-Yield Production Robotics initiative, introduced in March alongside plans for an expanded ROMULUS assembly facility at Breaux Brothers. The initiative applies industrial robotics and digital quality systems to uncrewed platform manufacturing, with the aim of reducing unit costs, improving schedule predictability and enabling programme-level delivery at scale.
Green said ROMULUS was engineered from the outset for scale, adding that by aligning design, autonomy and manufacturing, HII was creating “a production model that delivers predictable outcomes and positions us to meet growing demand for autonomous maritime capability.”
