Lockheed Martin has introduced a $50 million funding in Saildrone to combine what the businesses describe as combat-capable weapons and sensors onto Saildrone’s unmanned floor autos, with work starting instantly and on-water, live-fire demonstrations deliberate for 2026, the corporate acknowledged.
The partnership will concentrate on becoming Saildrone’s Surveyor platform with Lockheed Martin programs utilizing an open structure and safe command-and-control hyperlinks, the corporate acknowledged.
The press launch cites ongoing work to combine the JAGM Quad Launcher and notes that bigger Saildrone designs are being developed to assist heavier payloads, together with a Mk70 vertical launch system and skinny line towed arrays, in keeping with the corporate.
Lockheed Martin framed the collaboration as a technique to speed up the US Navy’s adoption of autonomous floor platforms for missions similar to fleet defence, undersea surveillance, reconnaissance, and strike. The corporate mentioned the trouble combines industrial autonomy with what it describes as “trusted” navy know-how, in keeping with the corporate.
“Lockheed Martin and Saildrone are main the way in which to reply President Trump’s name for the defence trade to behave in a different way and leverage the power of all of trade for our nationwide defence. Collectively, we’re combining essentially the most subtle industrial and defence applied sciences to ship a deadly naval resolution at pace and scale. The nation wants this functionality to keep up dominance over our adversaries, and we are going to ship it,” mentioned Stephanie C. Hill, president of Rotary and Mission Programs at Lockheed Martin, quoted within the press launch.
Saildrone’s founder and chief govt, Richard Jenkins, described the transfer as a pure development after a decade of autonomy improvement.
“For the final 10 years, we have now targeted on evolving the reliability, endurance, and autonomy of the Saildrone platform, which has been demonstrated in over 2 million nautical miles of lively buyer missions. With our know-how confirmed, de-risked, and mission-ready, now could be the fitting time to reinforce Saildrone USVs with subtle payloads to satisfy warfighter wants. This collaboration will give Saildrone the instruments we have to remodel the capabilities of our platforms, to incorporate digital warfare, anti-submarine warfare, subtle surveillance and reconnaissance, in addition to deploying kinetic results, all seamlessly built-in with Lockheed Martin’s trusted command, management, and fireplace management programs,” he mentioned.