With the ongoing conflict in the Strait of Hormuz and the increased global threat posed by unmanned vessels and aerial drones in contested waters, the Department of War is taking immediate action to overcome its current deficit in autonomous technologies. The War Department Defense Innovation Unit’s Suitable Warfighting Adaptive Payloads (SWAP-USV) solicitation seeks industry support for “robot boats” capable of employing aerial drones, including small attack drones, with the Phase 1 requirement that those boats be deployable within 120 days of award.

SWAP-USV particularly specifies proven USV+UAS integration, kinetic effects and production readiness. For MARTAC, these requirements are nothing new. They document capabilities we’ve been proving for over five years. It started with our work with the AeroVironment Switchblade® loitering munition initiative for Task Force 59, the Navy’s first program to test AI and unmanned systems, launched by NAVCENT in 2021. MARTAC was one of the first vendors to deploy and test USVs under this program, working with Naval Special Warfare Teams on integrating USVs and kinetic UASs. The initial effort involved us successfully mounting and deploying a Switchblade 300 off of a MARTAC Devil Ray T38 vessel, and later demonstrating the same capability with an Easy Aerial recoverable tethered drone used for ISR.

In 2022, when NAVCENT collaborated with the Kingdom of Bahrain’s maritime forces on the Digital Horizon exercise, we were among a select group of industry partners chosen to employ AI and unmanned systems to prove their efficacy. Because these early demonstrations required human-in-the-loop involvement, the Crown Prince of Bahrain even got to drive the T38 via a laptop computer. A MARTAC vessel remains in Bahrain to this day, ready for deployment if needed.

From that beginning, we have had success with repeated demonstrations elsewhere in the Mideast, in Australia and off of the U.S. coast. Our experience includes demos in real contested-environment operations (although no active combat) and five unmanned high value unit escorting transits of the Strait of Hormuz with the U.S. Coast Guard.

The stability of the MARTAC platform makes the difference. Our unique, patented catamaran hull design supports a range of operations, including steady launch and recovery of UASs underway and in diverse sea states. In fact, stability is a key reason why our vessels have been sole-sourced by the Navy―twice.

And, we have been proving the ease and rapid nature of iteration with a whole host of payloads. Our fleet’s modular design and the largest open deck space of any mid-range class USV support accelerated speed of iteration and rapid payload swapping to enable a range of missions – whether ISR, kinetic strikes, launch and recovery of UUvs or marsupial USVs like the MARTAC Mantas T12, target detection, identification and tracking, or transit and escort. Rapid target identification has always been a critical capability of our solutions.

In a May 2024 Eager Lion exercise in the Gulf of Aqaba, we successfully demonstrated automatic classification and acquisition of a target using our exhaustive database of known adversarial ships. Further, we enable launch flexibility as proven through deployment and return of the Devil Ray T38 from the USNS Lewis B. Puller expeditionary sea base via a crane from stand-off distance in the Southern Red Sea. This operating model can readily be used for launching UAVs off of the USV far away from the mothership, preserving crew and equipment safety. It also provides a much lower cost option to launching costly weapons against inexpensive threats.

The experience gained from our work with Task Force 59 and beyond is highly relevant for the current moment. Today, there is a new fight. We need to defend the naval force faster, more effectively and with less expensive weapons. DIU is calling for a cost-effective, persistent way to stay in the fight without going through precious missiles that cost millions of dollars and take months to manufacture. Ukraine has shown us what is possible, and the Department is trying to learn quickly from its example. MARTAC’s experience, insights, proven capabilities, and supporting services put us ready on Day 1 to support this critical mission.