New Startup Wants to Design Unmanned Ships for U.S. Navy

A new startup has emerged with plans to build midsized uncrewed vessels for the U.S. Navy, joining a growing roster of tech firms with an interest in building a future robotic fleet. Blue Water Autonomy, based in Boston, has raised $14 million in seed funding for its R&D on oceangoing, autonomous warfighting vessels.

Blue Water says that it has developed its vessel autonomy suite, begun saltwater testing, and developed its first concept ship designs in under a year. With the seed funding, it plans to expand its engineering roster and speed up vessel testing.

"Sea power has been the bedrock of America's security and prosperity for centuries," said Rylan Hamilton, co-founder and CEO of Blue Water Autonomy. "We believe the entire maritime economy is in need of transformation — it starts with supporting the U.S. Navy which needs dynamic industrial partners to bring top technology to its sailors, including ocean-going, fully autonomous ships."

The new startup is joining a burgeoning field. Because of the need to counter China's growing fleet, the U.S. Navy is beginning to experiment with small and midsize unmanned vessels in earnest, and new commercial players are responding to the demand signal. Three-year-old startup Saronic recently bought the aluminum boatbuilder Gulf Craft, securing a yard to build a 150-foot unmanned vessel design called the Marauder. Serco and Pentagon R&D hub DARPA recently launched their own prototype unmanned warship, the 180-foot Defiant, that is designed to be fully crewless from the start. And Austal is working with L3Harris on a series of workboat-based unmanned vessels for the "Overlord" series.

Blue Water's three founders bring expertise in naval operations, engineering and robotics to this growing field. Hamilton is a former Navy officer, former executive at Kiva (now Amazon's robotics division), and former founder of 6 River Systems, a warehouse-tech company. 6 River designed and successfully fielded an autonomous mobile cart system - dubbed Chuck - that helps human workers pick warehouse orders more quickly than they could on their own.

CTO Austin Miller is an MIT-educated roboticist and former executive with iRobot, maker of the Roomba household cleaning robot and other devices. CSO Austin Gray is a former Navy intelligence officer with recent experience in Ukraine's UAV manufacturing industry.

In a recent social media post, Gray said that the Navy is moving now on unmanned systems, but the service is still going "at their own speed." A recommended $250 million budget shift to test unmanned systems has been approved, but it won't be available for real-world use for a few more years.

"If a big company (with its own bureaucracy) wanted to re-program $250M for a new type of technology, they could probably make this happen in a few weeks or months, once they made the decision. The Navy's $250M investment will take until 2027 to show up," he said.