The U.S. Navy has signed a contract worth up to $99.7 million with Domino Data Lab to use artificial intelligence in underwater mine detection, as Washington works to reduce risks in the Strait of Hormuz.
The deal will expand Domino’s role in Project AMMO, or Accelerated Machine Learning for Maritime Operations, a Navy program focused on making mine detection faster, more accurate and less dependent on sailors operating in dangerous waters, Reuters reported.
The contract comes as President Donald Trump has said the Navy is clearing Iranian mines from the strait, one of the world’s most important oil-shipping routes. Even with a fragile ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran, mine-clearing operations can take months, leaving shipping lanes, energy markets and naval crews exposed to disruption.
AI moves mine-hunting beyond ships
Domino’s software is designed to help unmanned underwater vehicles recognize new or unfamiliar mines more quickly. The company says its platform can shorten the process of updating AI detection models from as long as six months to just days, giving the Navy more room to adapt when threats change.
“Mine-hunting used to be a job for ships,” Domino Chief Operating Officer Thomas Robinson said. “It’s becoming a job for AI. The Navy is paying for the platform that lets it train, govern, and field that AI at a speed required for contested waters that block global trade and imperil sailors.”
The system combines data from multiple sensors, including side-scan sonar and visual imaging tools. It also helps the Navy monitor how detection models perform in the field, identify errors and push corrections when the software needs to improve.
Hormuz crisis raises the need for faster detection
The main value of this technology is speed. Mines can vary by country, design and placement, which means underwater drones trained for one region may need quick updates before they can be effective somewhere else.
Robinson said the current Middle East tensions show why that flexibility matters.
“If there were UUVs in the Baltic Sea trained on Russian mines, and then they needed to be deployed to the Strait of Hormuz to detect Iranian mines, with Domino’s technology, the Navy could be ready in a week rather than a year,” he said.
Pentagon’s wider AI race accelerates
The mine-detection deal fits into a wider Pentagon push to move AI from data analysis into operational work, including logistics, targeting, planning and battlefield surveillance.
The effort has accelerated after a dispute with Anthropic, whose tools had been used inside parts of the defense ecosystem before the company was excluded from newer classified-network agreements over concerns tied to weapons and surveillance limits.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT is set to replace Anthropic’s technology under a similar arrangement, while the Pentagon has also moved to bring in a wider group of vendors to avoid depending on one provider.
Most recently, Google signed a classified AI agreement allowing its technology to be used for “any lawful government purpose,” placing it alongside OpenAI and other firms in the military’s fast-expanding AI roster.
