HII America has been awarded a contract by the US Navy to build 10 Romulus unmanned surface vessels (USVs) for the Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel (MUSV) program.
“HII has made deliberate, early investments in the development of autonomous systems, advancing capabilities essential to the Navy’s hedge strategy,” HII president and CEO, Chris Kastner, said.
“We remain firmly committed to supporting the US Navy’s vision and accelerating this critical capability from production to operational deployment.”
HII has delivered more than 750 Remus unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) to customers in more than 30 countries.
Together, Romulus, Remus and Odyssey ACS provide a scalable foundation for autonomous maritime operations supporting the US Navy and allied fleets, according to the company.
In 2025, HII committed to securing the partners, production capacity, supplier network and infrastructure needed to move quickly from design and development to construction of Romulus USVs.
“Unmanned vessels ultimately must be built, integrated, tested and sustained as part of a fleet,” president of HII’s Mission Technologies division, Andy Green, said.
“As the nation’s largest shipbuilder, HII understands that challenge from both sides. By pairing our advanced cutting-edge technologies with our shipbuilding expertise, and leveraging experienced regional partners and suppliers, we are creating a production ecosystem capable of delivering reliable autonomous platforms at the pace and scale the US Navy requires.”
Romulus has HII’s Odyssey Autonomous Control Solutions (ACS), a modular, open-architecture autonomy suite developed from decades of experience designing, building, operating and sustaining unmanned maritime systems.
Odyssey is designed to deliver consistent, predictable autonomous behaviour, a requirement for the US Navy’s transition from experimentation to operational deployment.
It provides decision-making architecture that enables unmanned systems to perceive their surroundings, navigate, manage onboard systems and payloads, coordinate with other manned and unmanned platforms, and execute complex missions with limited human intervention.
Odyssey’s modular, open-architecture lets the US Navy and allied partners rapidly integrate emerging sensors, command-and-control (C2) technologies and AI algorithms, ensuring Romulus remains upgrade-ready for evolving threat environments.
HII, with its partners Applied Intuition, Greenroom Robotics and Rodi Marine, successfully completed the evaluation phase of the MUSV program. HII’s Odyssey ACS vessel capabilities were validated through a series of operationally representative test events, demonstrating performance, reliability and mission readiness.
The US Navy-monitored testing took place in the Gulf of America over a 13-day period and evaluated the system under demanding, real-world operating conditions.
The most rigorous event was a long-endurance mission simulation. HII’s autonomy system successfully completed the full 420-nautical-mile mission over 28 hours, meeting all established success criteria and demonstrating the endurance and autonomous performance required for sustained maritime operations.
HII is working with Gulf Coast build partners including Breaux Brothers Enterprises, Halimar Shipyard and Bayou Metal Supply & Manufacturing in Louisiana to support Romulus production, and developed in partnership with Beier Integrated Systems and Incat Crowther.
HII also recently announced a new 10,000-square-foot expansion to increase the capacity of HII’s existing 40,000-square-foot unmanned manufacturing production campus capacity to build, develop and integrate advanced unmanned and autonomous maritime systems for both the Remus family of UUVs and Romulus USVs.