Rumors of Aevex’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.
On Friday, the California-based drone-maker announced that it’s secured $41.6M across two contracts with the Navy for its Fisher and SightGlass mine countermeasure (MCM) systems, designed to be deployed from the company’s Global Autonomous Reconnaissance Craft (GARC) and its newer Lynx and Chaser small unmanned surface vessels (sUSVs).
- SightGlass and Fisher, like GARC and Aevex’s other USVs, were developed by BlackSea, which Aevex snapped up in August for $650M.
- The contracts came days after Bloomberg reported that the US Navy had “suspended” GARC orders “due to ongoing performance issues.”
- Aevex, however, disputes that account, saying that “no orders have been halted” and that there was nothing to suspend in the first place, as it’s “successfully completed its contractual obligation having delivered 325 GARC units to the Navy in 2025.” High drama on the high seas.
Mine all mine: If you’ve been keeping an eye on a certain strait off the coast of Iran, sub-sea mines—or the threat of them—have been causing a whole lot of problems. That’s brought minehunting back in vogue, and served as one of the most notable tests of new tech in the war with Iran (remember that Anduril Dive-LD drone sub that was captured back in September?).
In fact, BlackSea (now Aevex) purpose-built its MCM systems for the Strait of Hormuz, and according to Aevex SVP for Maritime Systems (and former BlackSea CEO) Bob Pudney, they’ve been “operating overseas for weeks, if not over a month” after a strong showing in the DIU’s Mine Countermeasure Modernization Prize Challenge earlier this year.
- Aevex was one of three companies—alongside Vatn Systems and BeeX—awarded prizes in the challenge last month.
- Out of the $41.6M total in Aevex’s contract, “$26M came through DIU OTA to cover production and operation of Fisher” and “$15.6M through GARC contract to cover production and operations of SightGlass,” the company told Tectonic.
- Aevex is on a $350M contract (the subject of the Bloomberg report) with the Navy through 2027 for GARCs, which includes upgrades and payload modernization. The company says it has completed all deliveries and is shifting focus to adapting it to new use cases, like mine-hunting.
One-two punch: The Navy is getting a mine-hunting one-two punch with Aevex’s Fisher and SightGlass.
- SightGlass is the hunter, deployed from USVs to detect mines and scan the waters for threats.
- Fisher is the killer that comes in “once the SightGlass GARCs have detected the mine” to “neutralize it, keeping military personnel out of the water, reducing risk, and making that cost benefit better in our favor,” according to Pudney.
“We built [Fisher and SightGlass] around the real-time operational requirement,” Pudney said. “If you look at the Strait of Hormuz, it’s no deeper than roughly 300 feet, and so we wanted to be able to operate the entire depth of the water column, and we worked backward from that requirement.”
- “As we look at deeper operating areas, we may need to change up the equipment that we deploy there to facilitate those, but this was built from the ground up for the Strait of Hormuz,” he added.
Money talks: And despite the less-than-flattering reports on Aevex’s relationship with the Navy, Aevex says the mine-countermeasures deal proves the service is “voting with its dollars, and our relationship is proven by contractual actions, including the [MCM] ones,” Pudney said. “I’ve been associated with BlackSea, now Aevex, since 2024, and I don’t think our relationship with the Navy has ever been better.”
“As soon as Epic Fury kicked off, we were really collaborative together, and it was really about how we develop capabilities that the warfighter needs today,” he added. “I think the Navy sees that and recognizes that.”
