Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) has marked progress on its US unmanned vessel program with the installation of a commemorative hull plaque on the first ROMULUS 151 autonomous surface vessel in Louisiana.
The ceremony brought together Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, Vice Admiral Michael Wosje, deputy chief of naval operations for warfighting requirements and capabilities, HII President and CEO Chris Kastner, and Brannon Breaux, president of Breaux Brothers Enterprises.
“Louisiana has builders who have been turning aluminum into hard-working boats for generations,” Kastner said. “That’s the kind of team we like to assemble, one that can be trusted to compete and win.”
ROMULUS is a family of modular, AI-enabled unmanned surface vessels designed to carry out missions with limited human intervention.
The platforms use HII’s Odyssey Autonomous Control Solutions, an open-architecture system that allows them to navigate, manage onboard systems and payloads, and coordinate with crewed and uncrewed platforms.
The vessels are designed for a range of missions, including intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, mine countermeasures, strike operations, and countering unmanned systems. They can also launch and recover unmanned underwater and aerial vehicles.
ROMULUS Program
The latest development follows a series of milestones for the ROMULUS program, which HII began preparing for production in 2025 by securing industrial partners, suppliers, and manufacturing capacity.
The company in September completed the structural build of its first ROMULUS 151. HII and Breaux Brothers Enterprises completed and flipped the vessel’s hull, clearing the way for deck and pilothouse installation.
The milestone follows several production investments. In July, HII added Halimar Shipyard to its ROMULUS manufacturing network to increase capacity and accelerate vessel deliveries. In June, the company and Bayou Metal Supply & Manufacturing opened a dedicated production line in Slidell, Louisiana, to manufacture structural components for the vessels.
HII also partnered with engineering firm Nominal in March to improve the collection and analysis of operational data from its ROMULUS surface vessels and REMUS underwater vehicles. The initiative aims to shorten testing cycles and improve production efficiency.