Introduced by the United States in 2023, the Orca is an autonomous undersea vessel featuring a modular payload bay designed for long-range mine countermeasures. Key figures: length 26 m, top speed 8 knots. In service with 1 navy — United States.
| Subtype | Extra-large unmanned underwater vehicle |
| Length | 26.0 m (85.3 ft) |
| Propulsion | Hybrid diesel/lithium-ion battery, diesel generators recharging while surfaced |
| Range | 6500 km at 3 knots |
| Maximum speed | 8 knots |
The Orca is an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) under development by Boeing and Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) for the United States Navy. The project began in September 2017 when the Navy issued contracts to Lockheed Martin and the Boeing/HII partnership to develop competing designs for an extra-large unmanned undersea vehicle (XLUUV). In February 2019, the Navy contracted the Boeing/HII consortium to build four vehicles based on Boeing's Echo Voyager AUV. The Navy ordered a fifth vehicle in March 2019. Deliveries were originally scheduled for completion by the end of 2022. The Navy took delivery of the first Orca in December 2023.
The Orca design is based on the Echo Voyager but incorporates a more modular construction. This configuration allows for the addition of a payload module to support different mission requirements. The Navy requires the platform to support surveillance, submerged combat, surface combat, electronic combat, and minesweeping operations. Propulsion relies on a hybrid diesel and lithium-ion battery system. The vessel runs on battery power while submerged and recharges its batteries using diesel generators when surfaced.
Boeing gives the vehicle a length of 51 feet (15.5 m) in its base configuration, to which a 34-foot (10.4 m) modular payload section is added; that section can be removed to tailor the vehicle to a mission, and the full-length Orca measures about 85 feet (26 m). The payload bay carries up to 8 tons of dry payload — the equivalent of nine 21-inch UUVs or 48 smaller 12.8-inch ones — and provides structural mounts with power and data interfaces for rapid reconfiguration. Navigation relies on a Kalman-filtered inertial navigation unit backed by Doppler velocity logs and depth sensors, and the vehicle is designed for pier-side launch and recovery from a quay, without a dedicated support ship. Boeing lists seabed warfare, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, persistent presence and expeditionary support among its roles, with open-ocean transit, bottom following and long-duration moored seabed missions as operating profiles. At-sea sorties are conducted off the California coast from the Huntington Beach production site.
The Boeing-built Orca extra-large uncrewed undersea vehicle patrolled more than 1,000 nautical miles across the eastern Pacific in July, the longest autonomous mission the program has flown, the US Navy disclosed on August 15, 2026.