Looks like Blue Water Autonomy is doubling down. This morning, the Boston-based autonomous shipbuilding company told Tectonic in an exclusive release that they’re opening a DC office and hiring three new engineers to amp up their development and testing process with the Navy.
This comes just two months after the company emerged from stealth with $14M in funding led by Eclipse, Riot, and Impatient Ventures. BWA CSO and cofounder Austin Gray told Tectonic that the new Navy Yard office will allow them to test their vessel on the water and integrate feedback from military users way, way faster.
“The ability to come and touch something, and feel something, and see something, and use it, will generate trust for [Navy leaders] as users,” Gray said.
Gray said they plan to have their 100-150ft autonomous vessel completed by next year.
One track mind: BWA was formed around a novel idea: They would focus solely on building a large autonomous ship that can carry heavier payloads, like missiles or even fleets of drones, rather than starting small and building a whole range of models.
The ship they’re building:
- Will function on BWA’s bespoke full-stack autonomy suite, currently being tested on a 100-foot vessel in the water.
- Is being designed to travel thousands of miles at a time, which is critical for theaters like the Indo-Pacific.
- Is being designed in close coordination with military leaders, including reps from INDOPACOM, EUCOM, and Army Futures Command.
When asked how the company planned to test and build an autonomous ship for less than $14M, Gray said that they’re being “very frugal, very scrappy,” and that they don’t plan to go out for another round quite yet.
Bigger and better: The DoD has indicated it wants bigger and badder USVs. The Big Beautiful Bill, enacted by Congress a few weeks back (how time flies) allocated a whole $2.1B to medium and large USVs, and $1.5B to smaller unmanned vessels.
USV heavy hitters, including Saronic and Havoc AI, have also shifted their focus towards this larger class of vessel. Saronic says it’s building a 150-foot ship called Marauder, while Havoc is working on its own 100-foot vessel, which it says will be in the water by the end of the year.
Eye on the prize: As this push for bigger unmanned ships ramps up, Gray said it was critical to be building and testing alongside Navy end users in DC. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that one of their new principal engineers in Washington—Ryan Maatta—is pretty experienced in building big ol’ unmanned ships for the DoD.
Maatta is coming over from Serco, where he was a technical lead on the USX-1 Defiant—the vessel built for DARPA’s No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) Program.