Drone boat makers Saronic today announced today a $55 million Series A funding round to accelerate research and development and expand in-house manufacturing capacity to mass-produce autonomous drone boats for the U.S. Navy. The founders believe Saronic is uniquely positioned to produce a new generation of robot boats and envisage a future where thousands of uncrewed vessels act as ‘loyal wingmen’ for Navy warships.
Drone boats, also known as naval drones or Uncrewed Surface Vessells (USVs) have been around for a while but the Ukraine conflict has given them a place in the spot light for the first time. Ukraine does not have a crewed navy, but has employed several types of drone boats in spectacularly successful kamikaze attacks against Russian ships and the Kerch bridge. Ukraine’s drone fleet has kept the Russian fleet at bay and largely penned up in harbor in the Crimea. But Saronic have been working on this technology for years, and it goes far beyond one-off kamikaze attacks. The company sees robot boats assisting ships for all sorts of missions.
“We’re building platforms for a family of systems that can integrate with payloads and sensors,” says co-founder,” Rob Lehman, a former US Marine. This covers everything across the whole sweep of anti—surface vessel, anti-submarine warfare and anti-aircraft operations and others. “Our platforms enable a diverse set of mission requirements in the maritime domain from command and control, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting (ISRT), etc. that enable the delivery of kinetic and non-kinetic effects.”
Lehman notes they specifically design for missions relevant to the U.S. Navy, ensuring that the boat is tailored to the mission rather than the other way around.
Saronic has so far unveiled two drone boats, the six-foot Spyglass and thirteen-foot Cutlass, both equipped with advanced sensors and a high level of autonomy. These are not remote-controlled vessel with a human operator steering them via video like those seen in Ukraine, but robots capable of carrying out missions on their own.
“This is not just autonomous navigation where a vessel can travel on its own via a series of waypoints,” says Lehman. “What we are building is true mission autonomy that will be relevant and compelling.”
This autonomy goes way beyond sensing and avoiding other vessels, but extends to complex behaviors involving multiple boats. For example, a boat involved in the anti-submarine warfare mission which picks up a signal might maneuver itself to get a better view while signaling other drone boats to move in a coordinated group to locate the source, as well as sending details to a human overseer. This fits in with concepts like the Navy’s Super Swarm project which could also see swarms of kamikaze boats attacking in concert with aerial drones and miniature robots subs.
Lehman says that their design process ensures that their boats will be affordable rather than ‘exquisite’ (a term used for many legacy platforms like the famously expensive F-35) and that everything is geared towards a product that can be produced rapidly and at scale. The drone boats needs to be attritable, which is not quite the same as being expendable. Unlike Ukraine’s remote-controlled kamikaze boats, they will be expected to survive and carry out multiple missions , but they will be sufficiently inexpensive that they can be replaced easily and (unlike crewed vessels) commanders need have no hesitation about sacrificing them whenever it is expedient. They will be deployed by the thousand.
“We have our eyes wide open on the price sensitivities,” says Lehman. “We are priced more like a munition than a ship.”
There are plenty of other U.S companies in the drone boat business, ranging from defence primes to boatbuilders. But Saronic can claim a unique advantage.
“We are the only company in the market that started as a tech company with the goal of delivering capability to the DoD through boats,” says Dino Mavrookas, the other co-founder and a former Navy SEAL. “Others are boat companies, trying to adopt new technology to deliver capability. We’ve already seen from the self-driving industry that when you try to adapt new software for legacy hardware it does not scale.”
Saronic develops the software and hardware side-by-side to create an efficient integrated vessel.
This idea of a tech company seeking to revolutionize a defense sector dominated by well-established giant contactors is gaining traction. Saronic are pursuing the same dream as billion-dollar-startup Anduril, another tech company which focuses on the opportunities offered by AI rather than specific platforms. Anduril’s latest purchase will see it building low-cost ‘loyal wingman’ drone jets to assist F-35 pilots and make up numbers. Saronic essentially plan to do the same at sea.
“We want to augment the surface fleet, which will remain relevant, with small, attritable platforms,” says Mavrookas.
Mavrookas says that the drone boats will provide ‘stand-off- that is, they will allow crewed vessels to remain at a safer distance from the enemy while the uncrewed vessels act as their eyes and ears, and, if necessary, weapons-delivery platforms.
Some of the drone boats may, like their Ukrainian counterparts, be designed specifically as munitions for one-way attack runs. But they may be accompanied by others bristling with sensors to identify targets and assess the effects of strikes, or electronic warfare vessels to decoy, distract and jam enemy warships.
Others may be designed for the opposite missions: acting as a defensive screen against swarms of incoming enemy attack boats. Lehman notes in particular the competition with China and the Navy’s urgent need for solutions.
“We understand the time sensitivity,” says Mavrookas. “That’s the speed we’re working at to build innovative solution that deliver capabilities that don’t yet exist and are direly needed.”
The $55 million in a Series A round is led by Caffeinated Capital with participation from 8VC, Andreessen Horowitz, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Point72 Ventures, Silent Ventures, Overmatch Ventures, Ensemble VC, Cubit Capital and the U.S. Innovative Technology Fund.
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