Lockheed Martin is investing $50 million in Saildrone, a specialist in maritime autonomous systems. The collaboration will see commercially available unmanned surface vehicles (USV) equipped with lethal defence technology.

Saildrone, Lockheed Martin develop marine drone defence capabilities

“For the last 10 years we have focused on evolving the reliability, endurance and autonomy of the Saildrone platform, which has been demonstrated in over 2 million nautical miles of active customer missions,” said Richard Jenkins, founder and CEO, Saildrone.

“With our technology proven, de-risked and mission ready, now is the right time to augment Saildrone USVs with sophisticated payloads to meet warfighter needs.”

Electronic warfare
The collaboration with Lockheed Martin will see Saildrone adding electronic warfare capabilities to its platforms. These include support for anti-submarine warfare, and surveillance and reconnaissance. The weaponry will integrate with Lockheed Martin’s command, control and fire systems.

The companies have the goal of delivering the upgrade of the USVs in 2026. This will include including on-water, live fire demonstrations.

“Lockheed Martin and Saildrone are leading the way to answer President Trump’s call for the defense industry to act differently and leverage the strength of all of industry for our national defense,” said Stephanie C. Hill, president, Rotary and Mission Systems, Lockheed Martin.

“Together, we are combining the most sophisticated commercial and defense technologies to deliver a lethal naval solution at speed and scale. The nation needs this capability to maintain dominance over our adversaries, and we will deliver it.”

Saildrone
The first Saildrone USV sailed from San Francisco to Hawaii in 2013, covering 2,200 nautical miles in 33 days. And its USVs were first deployed by the U.S. Navy in 2021.

The company highlights that Covid-19 speeded company developments. On their website the CEO writes:

“COVID was a massive accelerator for Saildrone, highlighting the fact that our USV fleet persisted on mission, unaffected, while ships were stuck in port, quarantined, and immobile. We had about 45 Saildrone USVs deployed around the world when COVID hit. Unable to travel to service the systems, the fleet continued to perform flawlessly, performing some vital tasks normally undertaken by ships.”

One such example was the annual Alaska pollock fish stock survey in the Bering Sea, which we undertook entirely remotely. The data we collected found more fish than anticipated, which enabled NOAA to set a higher catch limit for that year. This had a significant positive commercial impact on the Bering Sea fishing industry.”