Lockheed Martin has made a $50 million investment in Saildrone, a global leader in maritime autonomous systems.
This strategic collaboration will deliver commercially available unmanned surface vehicles (USV) equipped with lethal, combat-proven defense technology. The companies will collaborate with a goal of delivering integrations, including on-water, live fire demonstrations, in 2026.
Why it matters
This commercial relationship marries the world’s most sophisticated and trusted defense technology with the most capable and operationally tested USV technology. This combination will be key to realizing the US Navy’s USV vision for critical missions such as fleet defense, undersea surveillance, reconnaissance, and attack. Work will begin immediately, applying an open architecture approach along with secure command and control capability to integrate Lockheed Martin’s JAGM Quad Launcher (JQL) system onto the Saildrone Surveyor platform.
Larger Saildrone vehicles are already in development to support significantly larger payloads and capabilities to include the Lockheed Martin Mk70 VLS launcher and thin line towed arrays.
Expert perspectives
Stephanie C. Hill, president, Rotary and Mission Systems, Lockheed Martin: “Lockheed Martin and Saildrone are leading the way to answer President Trump’s call for the defense industry to act differently and leverage the strength of all of industry for our national defense. Together, we are combining the most sophisticated commercial and defense technologies to deliver a lethal naval solution at speed and scale. The nation needs this capability to maintain dominance over our adversaries, and we will deliver it.”
Richard Jenkins, founder and CEO, Saildrone: “For the last 10 years, we have focused on evolving the reliability, endurance, and autonomy of the Saildrone platform, which has been demonstrated in over 2 million nautical miles of active customer missions. With our technology proven, de-risked, and mission-ready, now is the right time to augment Saildrone USVs with sophisticated payloads to meet warfighter needs. This collaboration will give Saildrone the tools we need to transform the capabilities of our platforms, to include electronic warfare, anti-submarine warfare, sophisticated surveillance and reconnaissance, as well as deploying kinetic effects, all seamlessly integrated with Lockheed Martin’s trusted command, control, and fire control systems.”