The small unmanned surface vessel (sUSV) scene may be pretty crowded, but Seasats is still diving right in.
On Monday, the San Diego-based startup launched its second USV offering: A bigger, speedier sibling of its flagship Lightfish vessel called the Quickfish, which was unveiled at a recent Navy exercise in California.
Gone fishing: Seasats’ first sUSV, the Lightfish, has had quite the run. Earlier this year, the sUSV made a successful trans-Pacific voyage from Japan to San Diego and went viral after running into a Chinese destroyer on the way.
Then, the company won an $89M five-year IDIQ with the Navy to supply the Marine Corps with Lightfish earlier this month.
While the main payloads on the smaller Lightfish are ISR and sensing capabilities, the Quickfish is designed as an “interceptor USV” for missions focused on deterrence, interdiction, and kinetic strikes (read: go boom).
As Seasats CEO Mike Flanigan described it to Tectonic, the Quickfish is the Lightfish’s “big brother, a high-speed enforcer enabling response to Lightfish detections.”
Go fast: Here’s what Seasats says the Quickfish puts on the table:
- It’s 17 feet long and weighs 1,600 pounds, a big step up from the 11-foot-long and 340-pound Lightfish.
- It boasts multi-week at-sea endurance and a top speed of over 35 knots, powered by both hybrid electric and combustion engines.
- The vessel offers payload modularity, including a stealthy UAV launch bay that protects aerial drones from detection and the elements.
- Its “flat pack” design enables cheaper and nearly toolless construction, which Seasats CEO Mike Flanigan said makes it popular with foreign buyers who “want to be able to control their defense capabilities and not be overly reliant on US manufacturing.”
The company said that initial units are priced around $500K, and that currently they can pump out up to 250 of them a year. However, they expect unit costs to drop and production capacity to increase based on demand.
Making a splash: Even with all the competition in the sUSV space—from Saronic’s Cutlass, Havoc AI’s Rampage, Kraken’s Scout, and a whole bunch more—the Quickfish is already turning some heads. According to Seasats, an “undisclosed US defense prime” has already bought one, and customers in Australia, the Philippines, and Japan have signed agreements for local manufacturing with the company.
Flanigan told Tectonic that the “aerial vehicle integration from the ground up” is a big selling point for the Quickfish, particularly since “most UAV integrations have been deck mounted, clearly visible, and only suitable for flat water demonstrations.”
“The biggest issues we heard from interceptor USV users are a lack of reliability and endurance,” he added. “Those are two strength areas for Seasats, and we’re keen to build on that reputation with the Quickfish.”
Seasats has big plans for the Quickfish, but they’re already looking at going bigger: The company teased “one other long-endurance, heavier payload capability USV that is in the works but not public yet.”
2027, here we come.