One cat, two cat, Red Cat, Blue…Ops? (Sorry.) Earlier this week, aerial drone-maker Red Cat Holdings ($RCAT) announced the launch of a maritime division called Blue Ops, diving headfirst into the ever-growing unmanned surface vehicle (USV) space. Maritime autonomy, all the rage, et cetera, et cetera.
Sky to sea: So far, Red Cat’s eyes have been in the sky. Its subsidiaries—Teal Drones and FlightWave Aerospace—have carved a solid niche in the small-UAS market:
- Last year, Teal won the Army’s Short Range Reconnaissance (SRR) program of record, replacing Skydio on the nearly $100M contract.
- Red Cat also partnered with Palantir to integrate its AI Visual Navigation (VNav) software on Red Cat’s Black Widow drones.
- The Army executed a Low-Rate Production (LRP) agreement for up to 690 of those Black Widows last month.
They’ve also earned some headlines in recent months for their lawsuit against Vector, which they accuse of stealing trade secrets under the Defend Trade Secrets Act.
Red Cat’s feeling blue: The maritime move has been in the works since May, when Red Cat first teased plans to enter the “rapidly evolving” USV market. They made that jump official this week with the launch of Blue Ops, led by third-generation boatbuilder Barry Hinckley.
“Our move into maritime autonomy was part of the natural progression of our larger, long-term strategy versus a random jump,” Hinckley told Tectonic. “It’s been part of our roadmap for a while to evolve into an all-domain defense company, and Blue Ops opens multiple opportunities to advance this mission.”
“In addition to building the boats, a big part of that strategy is the ability for us to integrate our existing aerial drones into uncrewed surface vessels,” Hinckley added. “We’re working to combine the tech stack that we’ve developed for air, land, and sea autonomy and common control to enable multi-domain operations.”
Jumping in: Red Cat has big plans for the new venture, Hinkley said.
- Blue Ops will build a whole family of USVs ranging from 5 to 11 meters, with four boats planned and “possibly a fifth.” The USVs will be built at US facilities “soon to be announced.”
- They already announced the launch of a 7-meter Expeditionary Multi-Role Craft, which is in production and will be the first member of the USV family.
- The 7-meter variant has “five use cases: kinetic, SAM, UAV deployment, ISR, and machine gun,” Hinkley said, with the end-user determining the final payload.
Out at sea: If you’ve been reading Tectonic, you know the small and mid-USV market is already getting crowded.
Saronic’s Corsair and Mirage, Kraken’s K3 Scout, Havoc AI’s Seahound, and others are in the same class, and the Navy has already started picking favorites—just look at Saronic’s $392M OTA to deliver USVs through 2031.
Blue Op’s competitive advantage in this space, according to Hinckley, is in aerial-maritime drone teaming, which he said would “form a complete multi-domain battle system with swarm capabilities that support ISR, anti-air, kinetic strike, and more.”
If Red Cat can replicate the success it’s had in the sky in the maritime domain, it could be well-positioned to claw back some market share—but the competition will be fierce.