Saildrone Envisions European Expansion After Baltic Sea Exercises

The founder and CEO of unmanned surface vessel (USV) company Saildrone said the company is ripe for significant expansion to more European customers following a June NATO test and demonstration in the Baltic Sea.

Last month, Saildrone launched four 33-foot long Voyager USVs out of Denmark: two north of the country and two sailed 500 miles to Finland for two weeks of operations with NATO’s Task Force X. While there, they performed in various demonstrations, including red-blue fleet operations.

Commercial operators deploy Saildrone Voyager Unmanned Surface Vessels (USVs) out to sea in the initial steps of U.S. 4th Fleet’s Operation Windward Stack during a launch from Naval Air Station Key West’s Mole Pier and Truman Harbor on Sept. 13, 2023. (Photo: U.S. Navy by Danette Baso Silvers/Released)
Commercial operators deploy Saildrone Voyager Unmanned Surface Vessels (USVs) out to sea in the initial steps of U.S. 4th Fleet’s Operation Windward Stack during a launch from Naval Air Station Key West’s Mole Pier and Truman Harbor on Sept. 13, 2023. (Photo: U.S. Navy by Danette Baso Silvers/Released)

Saildrone first announced the deployment of four USVs to the Baltic Sea under contract to the Danish Armed Forces in May (Defense Daily, May 15).

NATO said this was built upon the U.S. Navy’s Task Force 66 operations in the Middle East, where slow-moving Saildrone USVs observe a maritime region. In that theater, after Saildrone vessels observe suspicious vehicles, the Navy deploys faster moving USVs to further investigate.

This exercise helped increase “the visibility for Saildrone to other NATO participants. It was closely watched by all the NATO countries there, and it was great to be able to get that visibility into Saildrone services and what we’re going to bring to the Baltic in the future,” founder and CEO of Saildrone Richard Jenkins told Defense Daily in an interview.

Jenkins could not yet disclose specific countries, but amid these operations he confirmed Saildrone has “multiple countries in advance discussions with regard to Saildrone services in the Baltic.”

Ultimately, he hinted that before the end of the year, “we should expect to see, I think, multiple Saildrone fleets in the Baltic.”

While he could not provide specifics during discussions and negotiations, Jenkins said the entire Baltic Sea could be covered by 20 to 30 Saildrone Voyager USVs for 24/7 coverage, from Denmark to Finland.

He specified Voyager is the optimal choice over their largest vessel, the 65-foot Surveyor, given relatively shallow water and how its sonar and bulti-beam sensors can “reach the bottom, easy.”

Saildrone USVs have sensors to map vessels both on and below the water surface, “which is crucial for the pipeline and fiber optic and national cable security,” Jenkins added.

He also argued Saildrone is in a particularly good position in the near term to offer and expand their USV offerings given NATO’s new commitment to increase member defense spending to five percent of GDP and global difficulties with sailor recruitment.

In this changing environment, Jenkins said Sialdrone has two major benefits over its competitors: its operating structure and long experience.

The company has typically been working with the U.S. Navy and now Denmark in a contractor-owned, contractor-operated (COCO) structure, so new clients do not have to ramp up naval recruitment and training just to operate the vessels nor deal with complex permanent procurement processes.

“They need solutions immediately and there’s just not many levers you can pull, if you’re a European country, to increase maritime security. And a ship [would] just take too long to build, too expensive. And what we’re seeing across the world is, with all our customers, they are struggling with recruitment and retention.”

Jenkins did note the company is open to other contracting models, including government-owned and operated vessels.

Saildrone Surveyor unmanned surface vessel starts a mission to map unmapped seafloor between San Francisco, Calif. and Honolulu, Hawaii in 2021 (Photo: Saildrone)
Saildrone Surveyor unmanned surface vessel starts a mission to map unmapped seafloor between San Francisco and Honolulu, Hawaii in 2021 (Photo: Saildrone)

Jenkins also noted Saildrone has been operating almost daily for upward of a decade and also entering its fourth year of continuous operations with the U.S. Navy. He said that probably makes them the “only operationalized USV on the planet.”

Although there are many and increasing offerings of unmanned maritime platforms, “I’m not sure of anyone doing anything more than demonstrations or daily missions…nothing else is really operationalized because it doesn’t have the range or endurance to be operated down-range.”

“What Saildrone has is 10, 11 years now of data collection and experience from all over the world, from the ice edge of the Arctic to the Antarctic, to hurricanes, and it’s that learning that gives you the ruggedness for the vehicle,” he added.

Jenkins described Saildrone’s sensor and software capabilities as combining 10 frames per second of images from its cameras with radar, radio frequency, acoustic and other sensors to provide a fused sensor output, so the customer sees a real-time stream of targets that is classified into various classes with threat levels.

“That is a very, very different place to what some of our competitors are currently doing, who are maybe where we were 10 years ago. They’ve just got a vehicle that works, but no actual onboard systems to give it the robustness or reliability or the sensor fusion capability that you can only get with time,” Jenkins said.

Expanding Production and Payloads

Jenkins said the company is open to working with more shipbuilders, expanding to international production, and adding new payloads to their USVs.

Saildrone is notably agnostic about who builds the USV hulls because they retain production of the “electromechanical backbone” at their facility in Alameda, Calif., for the foreseeable future. This includes the vessels’ necessary software, firmware and hardware.

“We’ve maintained the quality control piece of the electromechanical and software and firmware backbone, and it’s a modular system that can drop into almost any craft. So we are agnostic to where we manufacture the vehicles, and would absolutely look into in-country manufacturing for our international partners.”

In 2022 Austal signed a partnership with Austal USA for its aluminum production shipyard to become the exclusive builder of Saildrone’s largest USV, the Surveyor (Defense Daily, Aug. 30, 2022).

The Surveyor weighs 15 tons, comes with 600 gallons of diesel to help provide long endurance, and can carry a one to two ton payload.

Jenkins highlighted that only about 20 percent of a Saildrone vessel’s unique capabilities are tied to their specific vehicles, so they could apply the software and firmware backbone with the autonomy package to other types of vessel as well. 

However, he admitted that utilizing wind and solar power in that 20 percent is “part of the secret sauce of Saildrone.”

Saildrone is also open to adding new sensors and Jenkins admitted armaments are a “logical outcome for most unmanned surface vehicles.”

“I think everything is on the table. I think it’s a rapidly evolving piece, and we’re agnostic to the sensors and the payloads that we incorporate into the vehicle.”

If necessary, Jenkins said they could scale up vessels like their Surveyor. He compared the benefits to increasing vessel size to the varying sizes of yachts.

“The bigger it gets, the better it gets in terms of speed, range, duration. Water line length gives you speed and range, and then obviously volume gives you horsepower and fuel. So we are happy to scale the vehicle to any payload requirements.”