After years of losing ground to China, American defense startups are now working to change how U.S. military ships are manufactured. Saronic Technologies aims to produce batches of autonomous maritime drones for the U.S. Navy by 2031.

Washington

The U.S. Navy is working with companies such as Saronic Technologies to introduce autonomous surface vessels into its fleet. Saronic, founded in Austin, aims to deliver a range of unmanned maritime drones, with a current Navy contract valued at $392 million. These vessels are designed to perform a variety of missions, from transporting supplies to potentially engaging in operational roles, and can be operated by a single individual controlling multiple units simultaneously.

The initiative comes in response to the declining U.S. shipbuilding base and the need for cost-effective, rapidly deployable solutions. Saronic's approach leverages new manufacturing methods and autonomy to reduce costs and construction times. The company has already logged significant autonomous operational hours at sea and is focused on ensuring reliability in challenging maritime environments.

U.S. Navy eyes autonomous vessels to revamp fleet

Welcome back to The Takeout, welcome to the Conversation Corner. We're going to discuss some military innovation. Defense startups are now working to revamp the way the Navy operates, and doing so with unmanned vessels. My next guest co-founded one of those companies. Rob Lehman is the chief commercial officer of Saronic Technologies, which, if all goes well, by 2031 will produce batches of autonomous maritime drones. The U.S. Navy contract has a value currently of $392 million. Rob, it's great to have you with us. Thanks for having me. Saronic. What does that mean? Where does that come from? So, Saronic is a gulf in Greece where the Allied Greek Navy defeated the Persians in an outnumbered battle. Long time ago. The 300 in Thermopylae gets all the press, but the Saronic Gulf is where the magic really happens. So, I don't suppose you could have gotten a better headline out of Forbes Magazine. It reads as follows, a gonzo plan to beat China with giant robot boats. What's the gonzo plan? Well, we are focused on- And is it even gonzo? Well, we see it as an imperative. So, we started the company three years ago in Austin as a maritime autonomy and shipbuilding company with one mission, which was to redefine what maritime superiority meant for the U.S. and our allies. So, we're doing that in a very differentiated way with autonomous surface vessels. So, we have everything from a six-foot drone all the way up to 150 feet and more to follow beyond that. And we saw a decline in the shipbuilding industrial base. I'm a Marine. Dino, our CEO, is a former Navy SEAL. So, we saw the decline that was happening in the shipbuilding industrial base, and we saw a need to bring a new way to solve the problem. I came across a statistic, Rob, but one-tenth of 1% of shipbuilding is manufactured in the United States? It's egregious. And the Chinese have over 50% of global shipbuilding capacity. So, doing it the same way we've always done it, no matter how much money you throw at the problem, is not going to dig us out of the hole. What do these vessels do? I think what building a manned vessel will do, for the most part—so, we are focused on essentially being a Tesla pickup truck for whatever commercial or military customers need the platforms to do. So, get the things where they need to go, when they need to be there, with the autonomy and the ability to work collaboratively, to allow the mission planners or the companies to— Is this about moving supplies into a battlespace, or is it about being operational, lethally, in a battlespace? Yes. So, we say we enable the delivery of user-defined effects. It's a little bit of a colloquialism, but the thing is, you get to pick what you have this thing do. So, everything from very mundane missions, all the way to the highest end. And we're really focused on keeping sailors and marines out of harm's way, but also augmenting the manned fleet, whether it's a carrier, cruisers, destroyers. We need to have them, but we need to keep them safer and enhance their reliability and resilience. If I understand the materials correctly, lots of different stories about this. You do so aspirationally at a fraction of the cost. Absolutely. When you take a lot of the human factors out of a ship—so, bathrooms, staterooms, galleys—it makes the ships radically more simple and allows more fuel, more payload. So, we're able to do these new-build construction projects in a fraction of the time at a dramatically lower price point. And leveraging additive manufacturing and new ways of assembling these various components, we get them in the water faster at a lower price. So, you have skeptics, and the skeptics point out the tests, as I've read so far, in bays or in controlled environments. The sea is the least controlled environment on planet Earth. Very formidable. Things corrode. All sorts of nasty things happen, especially the farther away you get from the safety of a port. How do you deal with all those things? So, you're absolutely right. This, in many ways, is easier than the surface of the ocean. So, we have, on Corsair alone, our 24-foot platform, over 10,000 hours in the ocean and over 16,000 nautical miles traveled autonomously. So, we are on the water six days a week to make sure the unexpected and expected scenarios that you come across in the maritime environment are things we've had reps and sets to identify any issues and make sure they're mitigated before we ever put a platform in our customers' hands. And we do that through exercises with our customers, as well. And I've got about 30 seconds left, but as I understand it, one person can operate several at a time. One person can offer as many as you can put in the water at a time. Really? Most of our young sailors today are digital natives, and this is the same way they play video games with someone across the planet. So, just like you're the head coach for a team, you've got your players on the field. They know the playbook. They know what their capabilities are, and it's up to you to give them a plan to go execute. Rob, it's a conversation we're going to continue. I appreciate you coming in. Thanks, Major. Thanks very much.

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