Three undersea vehicle battery programs crossed from development into production-level procurement in the first half of 2026. L3Harris received a DIU OTA contract in March for its Torpedo Tube Launch and Recovery system, carrying what the company describes as the first Navy-approved AUV lithium-ion battery technology. Kraken Robotics disclosed $87 million in cumulative 2026 YTD product orders including SeaPower batteries and sonar systems as of April 2026, building on $45 million in SeaPower battery orders across calendar 2025, with Nova Scotia production operational. HII continued REMUS 620 production under a platform architecture that integrates a 9.6 kWh Li-ion module designed for torpedo-tube recovery into Virginia-class submarines.
Each program represents real hardware approaching fleet deployment. None has produced a public disclosure sufficient to assess cell-level FEOC exposure under NDAA Section 842. System-level specifications are available. Pack-level producers are sometimes identifiable. Cell-level supply chains remain opaque across all three.
This piece maps what is known, what is inferred, and what remains unresolvable from public sources. Nobody outside the program offices can determine whether these programs carry FEOC-origin cells, and Section 842 creates a compliance obligation that operates precisely at the tier where visibility ends.
| L3Harris TTLR | HII REMUS 620 | Kraken SeaPower | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pack producer | Inventus Power (Tier 2 source) | Not disclosed | Kraken (in-house assembly) |
| Cell supplier | Not disclosed | Not disclosed | Not disclosed |
| Cell chemistry | Li-ion (type unspecified) | Li-ion (type unspecified) | Li-ion pouch cells |
| Assembly location | U.S. (Inventus HQ); China, Mexico, Brazil also in footprint | Not disclosed | Nova Scotia; Germany |
| 842 FEOC attestation | None | None | None |
| Source tier for battery ID | Tier 2 (trade press) | No public source | Tier 1 (company releases, pack level only) |
L3Harris TTLR — The Strongest Signal, and Its Limits
The TTLR OTA carries the most specific battery provenance data of the three programs. Defense trade press reporting on the November 2024 delivery milestone identifies the battery producer as Inventus Power, a Woodridge, Illinois-based pack integrator that built the Li-ion Passive Propagation Resistant battery packs for the Iver4 900 AUV. The PPR architecture, developed in partnership with the Navy and drawing on NASA spacesuit battery technology, earned approval from the Navy Weapon Systems Explosives Safety Review Board. That WSESRB certification is the substantive basis for the "first approved" claim.
Inventus Power is a U.S.-headquartered pack integrator. Section 842's 95% functional-component-cost test and technology-license prohibition reach upstream of the pack level entirely, into cathode materials, anode materials, separators, electrolyte salts, and solvents.
Inventus Power operates manufacturing in the U.S., Mexico, China, and Brazil and opened a new R&D facility in Guangzhou in February 2026. FEOC status is determined by ownership and control, and a China manufacturing presence does not establish it. The traceability questions under Section 842 are distinct from FEOC entity designation: whether the cells in the Iver4 PPR packs source functional components from FEOC origins, and whether the cell design itself incorporates technology licensed from a FEOC entity. The Guangzhou R&D center makes the second question concrete in a way that manufacturing location alone does not. Neither question is answered by any public document. The cell chemistry, cell supplier, and component-cost origin within Inventus Power's supply chain are all undisclosed.
The WSESRB approval addresses thermal runaway propagation risk inside a submarine hull. It certifies pack-architecture safety under submarine-relevant conditions. Cell-origin auditing is a separate process with separate requirements, and clearing the WSESRB says nothing about component-cost provenance.
Source discipline: Inventus Power's role is identified in Tier 2 defense trade press, not in a Tier 1 procurement record. The DIU OTA does not name battery subcontractors in any publicly available document. No SAM.gov record for Inventus Power as a named DoD battery subcontractor was found.
HII REMUS 620 — A Specification Without a Supplier Name
The REMUS 620's battery module is well-characterized at the system level. The March 2026 data sheet specifies a 9.6 kWh Li-ion energy module, swappable for quick turnaround, with battery fault detection and built-in emergency features. Endurance reaches 110 hours. The platform has completed torpedo-tube recovery into a Virginia-class submarine, the integration pathway that matters for Block VII planning.
No cell supplier, cell chemistry, or component-cost origin is identified in the data sheet, in HII's SEC filings, or in any other public document reviewed for this analysis.
The Hitachi relationship requires clarification. The June 2025 agreement is a multi-year order from Hitachi for more than a dozen REMUS 300 vehicles. Hitachi is a customer purchasing platforms from HII, a relationship that tells us nothing about battery supply chain structure. Any analysis that reads the Hitachi agreement as a battery-supply signal is reading the wrong layer of the transaction.
HII has delivered over 700 REMUS vehicles to 30+ countries, with over 90% of units delivered in the past 23 years still in service. At that fleet scale, the battery supply chain question carries proportional weight. A multi-tier defense prime at this production volume has cell suppliers. Those suppliers are not visible in public records.
Kraken Robotics SeaPower — The Most Dynamic Program, the Least Transparent
Kraken's SeaPower is commercially the most active of the three and the hardest to trace at the cell level.
The order trajectory is steep. Across four announcements from February 2025 through April 2026, Kraken has disclosed over $108 million in combined SeaPower battery and SAS orders. Individual releases mix battery and sonar product lines, so the battery-specific total is lower than the aggregate; Kraken's own April 2026 cumulative figure of $87 million for 2026 YTD product orders includes both categories. The analytically significant detail is the customer base: the April 2026 release identifies battery contracts from "three large international defence companies," and the CEO has framed customer geography as spanning "the U.S., Europe, and Asia Pacific." No U.S. Navy program is named.
The technology is genuinely differentiated. SeaPower uses Li-ion pouch cells in a proprietary silicon polymer matrix that tolerates pressures up to 660 bar (6,000 meters ocean depth), eliminating pressure housings and oil compensation. Kraken claims "200% greater energy density" relative to traditional oil-compensated or pressure-housed legacy subsea batteries. That comparison is system-level: the polymer matrix eliminates housing mass that dominates the denominator in legacy architectures, so the gain reflects packaging efficiency as much as cell-level energy density.
Assembly occurs at Kraken's Nova Scotia facility (operational Q1 2026) and its original facility in Germany. Both are non-FEOC locations. The pouch cells are sourced externally, and the cell supplier is not disclosed in any Kraken press release, annual report, or TSX-V filing identified in this research. Kraken states SeaPower is "compliant with U.S. Navy and maritime safety and transportation standards." That addresses safety and transport compliance. A Section 842 FEOC attestation would require tracing component-cost origins through the entire cell supply chain, a fundamentally different exercise. Kraken has demonstrated the first. There is no public evidence of the second.
Why the Qualified-Supplier Pool Is Narrower Undersea
The FEOC question is structurally harder for UUV batteries than for drone or 6T applications, and the difficulty operates through mechanisms that compliance cannot easily work around.
Submarine safety certification is the first constraint. The WSESRB approval process that L3Harris's PPR batteries cleared has no commercial equivalent. A thermal runaway event inside a submarine pressure hull, where atmosphere management is already a life-critical system, is categorically different from one in a ground vehicle. The Navy's approval pathway is specific to pack architecture, cell abuse behavior under submarine-relevant conditions, and acoustic signature constraints that have no commercial analog.
Pressure tolerance is the second. Kraken's polymer-matrix encapsulation and L3Harris's PPR design are proprietary engineering solutions that qualify specific cells under specific conditions. Substituting a different cell supplier triggers requalification of the integrated system, not a component swap. Requalification timelines for depth-rated, submarine-approved battery systems are measured in years.
Form factor and energy density at mission-relevant scale add a third constraint. The REMUS 620's 9.6 kWh module must fit torpedo-tube dimensional constraints while delivering multi-day endurance. These are specifications that a narrow range of commercial cell formats can satisfy, and each requires custom engineering at the cell-module interface.
The compliance problem and the qualification problem are coupled. Even if a fully FEOC-compliant cell supply chain existed today, qualifying it into any of these programs would require a separate, program-specific effort with its own timeline.
Samsung SDI and the KSS-III as Allied-Nation Precedent
If the question is whether allied-nation industrial bases can field submarine lithium-ion batteries at production scale, South Korea's KSS-III Batch-II program provides the clearest answer. Samsung SDI supplies lithium-ion batteries for the 3,600-ton ROKS Jang Yeong-sil, launched October 2025 and scheduled for commissioning in 2027. Reporting from MADEX 2021 indicates the cells are COTS-derived. Three Batch-II submarines are planned, with deliveries through 2031.
This is a Korean Navy program, not U.S. DoD procurement. The limits of its precedent are precise. No WSESRB approval exists for Samsung SDI submarine cells. No U.S. DoD contract or defense qualification signal for Samsung SDI as a UUV battery supplier has been identified. South Korea is not a FEOC, but Samsung SDI's COTS cell supply chain would still need to pass a component-level cost-origin audit under Section 842 for any U.S. application. Korean cell makers' upstream exposure to Chinese-processed cathode materials, anode materials, and electrolyte salts is well documented in commercial contexts. The technology-license condition adds a further layer: whether Korean cell designs incorporate Chinese-licensed IP that was commercially irrelevant but potentially disqualifying under the statute has never been tested.
The KSS-III confirms that lithium-ion submarine batteries are deployable at production scale. Whether Samsung SDI's supply chain can pass a component-level audit under Section 842 for U.S. procurement is a separate and untested question.
Block VII and the Timeline Pressure
The FY2027 shipbuilding plan includes the first four Block VII Virginia-class submarines, with procurement beginning in FY2030–2031. Block VII is expected to feature expanded UUV integration. Alongside it, the Navy plans 16 Boeing Orca XLUUVs across the FYDP at $1.13 billion total. The Orca's battery supplier and chemistry are also undisclosed, extending the opacity pattern documented above into the Navy's largest UUV procurement by dollar value.
Section 842's new-contract ban activates January 1, 2028. The first Block VII procurement is roughly two years later. No DFARS proposed rule has been published to translate Section 842 into contract language, and no audit methodology exists to verify the 95% functional-component-cost threshold.
Even if a program office wanted to demonstrate compliance today, no contracting mechanism exists to require or verify it. The statute is law; the enforcement pathway is not built. No DoD or Navy program office statement on UUV battery FEOC compliance strategy has been identified in public records.
The absence of an SBIR pipeline specifically targeting UUV battery FEOC compliance, in contrast to the Army's 6T battery SBIR activity, suggests the Navy UUV community is developing battery supply through direct program contracts and OTAs rather than through a structured domestic-sourcing initiative. That is an editorial inference from the absence of evidence, labeled as such.
What the Disclosure State Tells Us
The pattern across all three programs and the Orca XLUUV is consistent. System-level specifications are public. Pack-level producers are sometimes traceable through trade press. Cell suppliers, cell chemistries, and component-cost origins are absent from every public record reviewed. The one named battery producer, Inventus Power, has a manufacturing and R&D footprint that raises the FEOC traceability question rather than resolving it.
Defense primes do not routinely disclose Tier 2 and Tier 3 suppliers. That is normal. Section 842 creates a new obligation that operates precisely at the tier where disclosure is thinnest. The statute was written to reach into the cell: past the pack integrator, past the module assembler, into the cathode powder and the electrolyte salt. The technology-license condition reaches further still, into the IP provenance of the cell design itself. For UUV batteries, where the qualified-supplier pool is already narrow and requalification timelines run to years, the distance between today's disclosure state and the statute's requirements does not close incrementally. It closes through deliberate, program-specific supply chain restructuring, or it does not close, and the Section 833 waiver architecture becomes the operating reality for undersea programs.
Two years is not enough time to qualify a new cell supplier into a submarine-approved battery system. If that work has started inside these programs, it is not visible in public records. If it has not started, the math does not favor completion before the Block VII procurement window opens. The opacity documented here is a leading indicator of a compliance problem that the Navy's UUV programs have not yet demonstrated a public strategy to solve.
- DFARS FOCI proposed rule: DoD's May 7, 2026 proposed rule on foreign ownership, control, and influence disclosure has a July 6 comment deadline and would build the supply chain visibility infrastructure that makes battery compliance auditable.
- Section 836 repository launch: The voluntary compliance repository where offerors can attest to FEOC-free sourcing is due by January 1, 2027, and whether it launches on schedule is the first observable test of whether implementation infrastructure is keeping pace with the mandate.
- Kraken's Covelya acquisition: Kraken's pending acquisition of UK-based Covelya Group, expected to close in Q2 2026, expands its allied-nation defense footprint but does not resolve the cell-origin opacity at the core of the SeaPower supply chain question.
- Amprius domestic cell pathway: Amprius Technologies' manufacturing partnership with Nanotech Energy targets NDAA-compliant production for drone customers like AeroVironment and L3Harris, though no UUV application has been named and the dual-track China production model raises its own technology-license questions under Section 842.