Another day, another (speedy quick) partnership. This morning, maritime autonomy company HavocAI announced that it’s teamed up with engine manufacturer Ilmor to equip its vessels with some fancy-shmancy high-powered electric propulsion motors.
The two companies say they’ll build an outboard system called the ION Unleashed—a souped-up, defense-grade version of Ilmor’s consumer ION 6 motor—designed to deliver quiet bursts of speed, customizable power profiles, and seamless integration with HavocAI’s autonomy stack. Translation: smarter, faster unmanned boats with racing-pedigree electric engines built for contested waters.
“This partnership is more than a technical collaboration—it’s a shared commitment to redefining what’s possible in autonomous marine defense,” said Mike Lindberg, Vice President of Ilmor Marine. “The ION Unleashed is proof of what happens when two companies with aligned values and an innovative spirit come together to push electric propulsion into new territory.”
Autonomy at sea: We’ve written about (and spoken to) Havoc AI before. The USV company—helmed by Paul Lwin—has a pretty impressive track record: The company was founded in 2024 and, by the end of the year, had boats in the water and $11M in seed funding.
The company has been building a pretty solid circle of friends. HavocAI:
- Signed a partnership with Lockheed Martin to build medium-sized unmanned vessels back in July.
- Signed a deal with Tocaro Blue to build their marine radar processing system onto HavocAI’s vessels.
- Teamed up with Hawaii-based R&D firm PacMar to build larger autonomous vessels—up to about 100 feet.
So far, they’ve got a few different vessels. To date, they’ve all been powered by traditional, gas-powered engines.
- HavocAI’s flagship USV is the 14-foot Rampage, a super-low-cost sea drone that can be deployed in swarms. This is already being used by the DoD.
- Earlier this year, they unveiled the 38-foot Seahound and built their autonomy stack on the 42-foot KaiKoa, built by PacMar.
- Lwin told Tectonic this summer that they’ll have their 100-foot vessel—also built with PacMar—in the water by the end of the year.
Vroom vroom: Ilmor, for their part, are no strangers to the open sea. The company was founded in 1983 and started out building engines for Formula One and IndyCar, but in recent years, they’ve become a major player in the marine sports game.
They’re known, in particular, for their electric outboard motors called ION—speedy-quick engines that can power smaller boats with no emissions and very little sound. Sounds pretty ideal for some sneakier missions.
Lwin told Tectonic that they’ve already integrated Ilmor’s motors onto Havoc vessels that were tested at xTechPacific last month. These were the off-the-shelf ION 6 version strapped onto a Rampage, Lwin said, and even so, they increased performance and reliability over a traditional gas-powered engine. They also stood up to some pretty rough sea conditions.
“One of the boats flipped over, and everyone went, ‘Oh no,’” he said, “Then, immediately, the boat flipped back and it was engaging on a target… it kind of like shook itself up and just kept going.”
Better together: Now that they’ve inked the partnership, the two companies plan to co-develop the ION Unleashed to make sure it’s picture-perfect for Havoc’s vessels—from Rampage all the way up to the larger classes. Lwin said that collaboration and customization are a huge part of why they teamed up with Ilmor.
“This has unlocked future development,” he said, “These [engines] are specced for the 14’ vessels, but we will work with them on things for bigger and bigger vessels.”