A 34-year US Navy submarine veteran joining as advisor is a door-opener the order book needed next
AML3D (ASX:AL3) has appointed retired US Navy Rear Admiral David Goggins as a US board advisor, and the resume on this hire is unusually well-matched to the company’s actual sales pipeline.
Goggins spent 34 years in the US Navy designing, building and sustaining nuclear-powered submarines. His most recent role was Special Assistant for the trilateral AUKUS defence partnership, which is the exact policy machinery that will route Australian advanced manufacturing into US Navy programs over the next decade.
Advisor hires usually warrant a polite paragraph and a shrug. This one is different. AML3D is already in the US Navy supply chain through BlueForge, Newport News Shipbuilding and Austal USA’s three ARCEMY installations at Danville. The question for the past 12 months has been how the company climbs from individual contract wins to programmatic, repeat work under AUKUS.
Goggins is the kind of advisor who knows the answer to that question, and more importantly, knows the people who sign it off. We think this is a deliberate move to shorten the path from a A$30m cumulative US defence book to something materially larger.
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Why this advisor actually moves the needle in the AUKUS pipeline
The submarine industrial base in the US is the single biggest near-term opportunity for wire additive manufacturing. The US Navy has openly flagged supply chain gaps in submarine components, and AML3D’s nickel aluminium bronze qualification was built precisely for this gap.
Goggins led submarine design and sustainment programs at the Navy. He understands which parts fail to deliver from traditional suppliers, which program offices control the budgets, and how AUKUS-linked Australian manufacturers get onto approved vendor lists. That is not generic defence experience. That is specifically the right experience for what AML3D is trying to sell.
Worth noting, the company called out its expanded operations in Perth and Adelaide, which are the designated AUKUS hubs in Australia. The advisor appointment lines up with that geographic footprint rather than sitting in isolation as a US-only hire.
The bigger picture is the 100-system Navy signal, not the boardroom title
The US Navy Letter of Intent from earlier in the AML3D story flagged potential demand for up to 100 additive manufacturing systems and 3,400 additively manufactured parts by 2030. That target has always been the prize. Converting any meaningful share of it requires direct relationships with program managers, not cold outreach.
Our concern remains the same as it has been all year. A Letter of Intent is not a contract, and an advisor is not an order. The skeptical read is that AML3D is still building credibility infrastructure, while the cash conversion story still rests on H2 FY26 deliveries against the disclosed A$16.6m order book.
But the company is now stacking the right pieces. Customer references at Austal USA and Newport News, parts contracts through BlueForge, qualified materials and now policy-grade advisory firepower. The pattern matters.
The Investors Takeaway for AML3D
The next 12 months will tell us whether Goggins’s network translates into a named US Navy systems order rather than parts contracts. That is the step-change investors are waiting for, and it is the step Goggins is uniquely placed to help unlock.
We continue to think AML3D’s defence story is more credible than its market cap suggests, though execution on the H2 FY26 pipeline still matters more than any single appointment. Readers can find our prior coverage of the portable ARCEMY US Navy installation at stocksdownunder.
