The Navy is finally in a place where it can start picking winners in its pursuit of maritime—specifically underwater—drones, but the ability to produce them en masse should be a prime consideration when awarding contracts, according to one lawmaker.
“I think they’re making some good progress. I remember going to Newport…and seeing all kinds of great research projects. But when I asked, ‘When’s the down-select going to happen?’ People look at me like…’We’re just having fun experimenting with these platforms,’” Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said Tuesday during Defense One’s State of Defense Business event. “I think the Navy has finally gotten to that place. The key is not just, now, down-selecting, but how do you go to scale quickly with those operations?”
The congressman used an example of one company that built a 150-foot autonomous surface vessel in about six months to show how it can be done.
Saronic, a drone-boat startup based in Austin, Texas, announced during a panel at a General Catalyst Institute event Monday that it’s on track to complete its build of its Marauder vessel, which has a 3,500 nautical mile range, by December. Wittman was also a speaker at the event.
“So we acquired a shipyard in Franklin, Louisiana…the shipyard was closing down. So one of the things we think about is…how do we bring brand new capacity online in this country in a way that wouldn’t exist otherwise,” CEO and co-founder Dino Mavrookas said. “We laid our first weld on June 24 of this year, and that ship is going to be in the water by the end of the year.”
Saronic has already started building its second Marauder, side-by-side with the first one, and is “already seeing production efficiency gains,” Mavrookas said.
Saronic isn’t the only defense tech company focused on producing sea drones in large quantities. Anduril recently announced plans to build an autonomous surface vessel prototype in South Korea with HD Hyundai Heavy Industries, before producing them at their shipyard in Seattle, Wash. HavocAI also announced plans to build a 100-foot drone boat this year.
The concept of building robot boats in months, instead of years, should translate to underwater vessels too, Wittman said on Tuesday.
“That’s the kind of pace we need,” he said. “How do we make sure that we are not only awarding contracts, but awarding contracts at scale and with timeliness—and that is performing and delivering those platforms within very strict time frames?”
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