HII (Booth 923) today announced Breaux Brothers Enterprises in Louisiana will build four Romulus 151 uncrewed surface vessels in addition to the Romulus 151 currently under construction.
The announcement signals a rapid shift toward initial production, as HII pushes to accelerate delivery of autonomous surface capability to the U.S. Navy and allied partners, and indicates how marketplace for small and medium-sized uncrewed vessels is heating up rapidly due to Navy interest.
“Romulus represents a shift in how we deliver unmanned capability to the fleet,” said Andy Green, executive vice president of HII and president of HII’s Mission Technologies division. “We are 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.”
Romulus is a modular family of AI-enabled USVs designed to meet current and emerging requirements for the U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, joint forces and allied partners, the company said. The platform supports a wide range of missions, including intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, mine countermeasures, strike operations, counter-unmanned systems, and the launch and recovery of unmanned underwater and aerial vehicles.
The Romulus program is supported by HII’s expanding unmanned vessel production ecosystem, including its assembly facility at Breaux Brothers Enterprises and the High-Yield Production Robotics (HYPR) initiative. Together, these efforts are designed to transition unmanned vessel production from prototype builds to high-rate, digitally enabled manufacturing.
In March, HII released a plan outlining an expanded Romulus assembly facility at Breaux Brothers and introduced HYPR as HII’s initiative to apply industrial robotics and digital quality systems to unmanned platform manufacturing. By integrating automation, advanced tooling and standardized workflows, HII aims to reduce unit costs, improve schedule predictability and enable program-level delivery of unmanned systems. begin in late 2025.
