The Navy announced seven winners. It did not announce seven boat builders.
Each proposal in the Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel marketplace stacked at least four layers: a hull, an autonomy stack, a yard that would actually weld steel or aluminum and a capital network behind all of it. Some of those layers are public. Several are not. One of the most consequential relationships in the competition, the connection between a selected prime and a company widely reported as a loser, has never been explained by the Navy.
This is Part 2 of a six-part examination of the competition. Part 1 covered the program history and the requirements record.
The seven, and what is behind them
| Prime named by Navy | Vessel | Autonomy | Build path |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leidos | Not disclosed; Sea Hunter/Seahawk lineage | Leidos | Not disclosed |
| HII | Romulus, about 190 feet | Odyssey | Breaux Brothers, Louisiana |
| Saronic | Marauder, reported 180 feet | In-house | Franklin, Louisiana |
| Sea Machines | STEAMRACER | SM300 | St. Johns Ship Building, Florida |
| Galliano Marine Services | Two concepts, undisclosed | Undisclosed | Edison Chouest yards |
| PacMar Technologies | Reported 100-foot trial asset | Havoc AI | PacMar, Hawaii |
| Birdon | Not disclosed | Mythos AI | Birdon; planned Pensacola yard |
Three of the seven have not publicly identified the vessel they are testing.
Saronic: the capital story
Saronic Technologies is the company the competition will be remembered by, and it is worth being precise about why.
Founded in Austin, Texas, in 2022, it has raised money at a pace with few parallels in defense hardware. Andreessen Horowitz led a $175 million Series B in 2024 at a reported $1 billion valuation. A $600 million Series C followed in 2025 at a reported $4 billion valuation. In March 2026 the company closed a $1.75 billion Series D at a $9.25 billion valuation, led by Kleiner Perkins, with Advent International, Bessemer Venture Partners, DFJ Growth and BAM Elevate joining and 8VC, Caffeinated Capital, a16z, Elad Gil and Franklin Templeton continuing. [1]
The founding team is not a group of software engineers who discovered the ocean. Co-founder and CEO Dino Mavrookas served 11 years as a Navy SEAL across eight combat tours, then worked in technology investing at Vista Equity Partners. Co-founder and chief commercial officer Rob Lehman has 21 years of combined active-duty and reserve service and holds the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Marine Corps. Co-founder and chief technology officer Vibhav Altekar was an early Anduril engineer who worked on the Royal Australian Navy’s Ghost Shark program. Co-founder and chief operating officer Doug Lambert came from Liquid Robotics and Terradepth. [2]
That combination, senior special operations experience, a Marine field-grade officer running commercial strategy, defense autonomy engineering and maritime robotics, produces a company the Navy finds legible.
Saronic also has product in the water. Its 24-foot Corsair won a $392 million Navy production contract announced Dec. 8, 2025, with nearly $200 million placed on contract immediately. [3] The Times reported a Corsair helped rescue two downed military aviators near the Strait of Hormuz on June 8, 2026. [4] USNI News reported three Corsairs participated in a July 2026 strike on Iran’s Bandar Abbas naval base, hitting a repair pier and a midget submarine. [5]
Those are real operational results. They involve a 24-foot boat, not the 180-foot Marauder competing for MUSV.
The industrial buildout is the more aggressive bet. Saronic bought the former Gulf Craft yard in Franklin, Louisiana, in 2025 to build Marauder and announced a $300 million, 300,000-square-foot expansion projected to create 1,500 jobs. In July 2026 it selected an 835-acre site at the Port of Brownsville for Port Alpha, a planned $3.2 billion greenfield shipyard. Cameron County had approved a 95%, 19-year tax abatement the previous month. Saronic says construction begins in 2026, first production capacity opens in 2028 and the yard could employ up to 10,000 people over a decade while building vessels up to 850 feet. Mavrookas has floated a 4,000-acre expansion. [5]
Those are forecasts. No steel has been cut at Port Alpha.
Mavrookas has been candid about what it takes to sell to the Navy. “Not only did we have to build the best technology,” he said on a 2025 podcast, “we also had to build a government lobbying company.” [4]
Blue Water Autonomy: the excluded builder
Blue Water Autonomy filed the more aggressive of the two lawsuits, and its profile complicates the narrative that this was startups versus incumbents.
The company was founded in 2024 and lists its principal place of business in its complaint as 18 Hartwell Ave., Lexington, Massachusetts, though it presents publicly as a Boston company. [6]
Three co-founders. Rylan Hamilton, the CEO, began as a Navy engineering and surface warfare officer, went to Harvard Business School, became an early leader at Amazon Robotics and then founded 6 River Systems, a warehouse automation company that raised $45 million and sold to Shopify for $450 million. Scott N. Miller, the chief technology officer, holds a Dartmouth engineering degree and an MIT master’s in ocean engineering, spent 10 years at iRobot rising to vice president of engineering, led manufacturing for the first four generations of Roomba and Scooba from China and later founded Dragon Innovation. Austin Gray, the chief strategy officer, is a former Navy intelligence officer and current Navy Reserve lieutenant. [7] [8]
The company also hired for the gaps. Tim Glinatsis joined as chief operating officer from General Dynamics NASSCO and Bath Iron Works. Ryan Maatta, a principal engineer who held senior technical leadership on USX-1 Defiant, the vessel built for DARPA’s No Manning Required Ship program, joined in July 2025 when the company opened a Washington office. [9]
Its capital is venture capital, not private equity: a $14 million seed round from Eclipse, Riot and Impatient Ventures, then a $50 million Series A led by GV in August 2025, bringing the company’s stated total to $64 million. [10]
Liberty, its entry, is a 190-foot steel autonomous ship built on a licensed Damen Stan Patrol 6009 axe-bow hull. The company advertises more than 10,000 nautical miles of range and more than 150 metric tons of payload. It signed a production agreement with Conrad Shipyard in September 2025 and says it hopes to build 10 to 20 Libertys a year after first delivery. [11]
Blue Water had also done the propulsion work Congress asked for. It reported surpassing 1,000 hours of ocean-based testing on a 165-ton, 100-foot vessel in New Bedford, Massachusetts, running three shifts a day, seven days a week, exceeding the 720-hour land-based baseline Congress mandated in 2021. [12]
The Times reported the company spent more than $10 million on that test vessel. [4] The Navy found it Unacceptable on vessel design and test execution.
Saildrone: the operator nobody could call unproven
Saildrone is the hardest exclusion to explain, and its filing knows it.
Founded in 2012 by Richard Jenkins, who set the world land-speed record for a wind-powered vehicle in 2008, the Alameda, California, company built its business on small autonomous sailing craft. Its complaint claims more than 70 vessels deployed, more than 2.5 million mission nautical miles since 2012 and 10,217 drone-days at sea across 19 operational missions in 2025 alone, with better than 70% annual uptime. It describes itself as the only USV manufacturer with full ABS class certification across its operational fleet. [13]
It has worked with Fifth Fleet and Fourth Fleet, the Coast Guard, NOAA and allied governments. It holds a three-year, $37 million blanket purchase agreement with the Coast Guard. Its prior Voyager work for the Defense Department began as a $5.9 million prototype and grew to a $54.1 million production ceiling. [13]
The Navy is still buying from the company it rejected. On June 30, 2026, the same week the lawsuits were filed, the Navy awarded Saildrone a $16.3 million extension supporting Fourth Fleet counterdrug operations, with 21 Voyagers operating in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. [14]
Spectre, unveiled at Sea-Air-Space on April 20, 2026, is a different animal from the sailing drones: 52 meters, about 170 feet, 250 tons, twin shaftlines, hybrid diesel-electric propulsion with Caterpillar diesels up to 5,000 horsepower and controllable-pitch propellers. Saildrone claims 3,280 nautical miles in flat water and 2,790 nautical miles at 25.3 knots in Sea State 4 head seas carrying 25 metric tons, which exceeds the Navy’s threshold. Two variants were marketed, a Silent Endurance configuration with a 43-meter wing for anti-submarine work and near-silent electric operation to 12 knots, and a wingless Stealth Strike version. [15]
Fincantieri Marine Group would build the hull in its Wisconsin system, with capacity stated at five per year and first sea trials scheduled for early 2027. The wing would come from American Magic Services in Pensacola. [16]
One important correction to press coverage: Spectre received ABS Approval in Principle in December 2025, not full class certification. The full-class claim applies to the company’s existing operational fleet. Design validation came from 1/7th-scale self-propelled model testing and computational fluid dynamics, with tank testing completed in January 2026. Long-lead components were ordered in late 2025. [13]
Saildrone learned it had lost from a news article. After inquiring, it received what its complaint describes as a four-sentence email offering no explanation tied to the criteria. [13]
HII: the prime that went small
Huntington Ingalls Industries advanced, and how it advanced is more interesting than the fact that it did.
Romulus is a family of roughly 190-foot, commercial-standard vessels rated at 25-plus knots for sustained open-ocean operation, marketed for ISR and targeting, counter-drone and force protection, strike and fires, mine countermeasures and launching smaller uncrewed vehicles. HII’s differentiator is Odyssey, an autonomy suite the company says has logged more than 6,000 operational hours across more than 35 USV platforms and is fielded on REMUS and Romulus in 30 countries. [17]
The build site is the tell. USNI News reported Romulus would be built at Breaux Brothers in Louisiana, not at Newport News or Ingalls. HII’s team also includes Beier Integrated Systems and Incat Crowther. [18]
The largest military shipbuilder in the country entered a marketplace designed to open the industrial base by borrowing a small Gulf yard.
Leidos: the incumbent experimenter
Leidos has the longest operational pedigree of any entrant through the DARPA ACTUV lineage that produced Sea Hunter and the upgraded Seahawk. Those vessels participated in the Navy’s Unmanned Systems Integrated Battle Problems and a four-ship western Pacific deployment in 2023.
Breaking Defense reported in June 2026 that the carrier Theodore Roosevelt would deploy with a Seahawk as part of its strike group, described as the first regular carrier strike group integration of such a vessel. The Navy had not made public the deployment dates, test objectives, command-and-control arrangements or concept of operations. [19]
Experts raised practical cautions in that reporting. Seahawk may reveal endurance and refueling tradeoffs that stress already-vulnerable oilers. It is slower than a carrier, so tactics must prevent it from falling behind during high-speed transits.
Leidos has not publicly identified which hull it is testing for the marketplace. Assuming it is Seahawk would be a guess.
Sea Machines: the other Boston company
Sea Machines Robotics is the counterexample that should stop any theory resting on regional politics.
Headquartered at 266 Summer Street in Boston, founded in 2015, led by CEO Chip Wasson with founder Michael Johnson as chief technology officer, the company says it has raised more than $55 million. Its entry, STEAMRACER, is described as purpose-built while retaining limited short-duration manned capability. Its coalition includes St. Johns Ship Building in Palatka, Florida, TOTE Services, Ring Power, Incat Crowther and EMI-W&O, with Sierra Nevada supplying MAST secure communications. [20]
Two Massachusetts autonomy companies entered the same competition. One advanced. One is suing. Geography does not explain the divergence. Different technical approaches and different industrial teams might.
Galliano, Edison Chouest and the Anduril question
This is the unresolved item in the competition.
USNI News reported that Galliano Marine Services of Louisiana, which also does business as Edison Chouest Offshore, was selected for two different MUSV concepts. The same reporting noted Anduril had announced an Edison Chouest MUSV partnership in April, but the Navy’s official list named Galliano and did not name Anduril. [18]
Anduril’s own April 20 announcement describes partnering with Edison Chouest to produce autonomous surface vessels in the company’s U.S. yards, citing more than 6,000 shipyard employees, more than 20 U.S. facilities and roughly 300 vessels operated globally. [21]
So a company reported as a loser has a public partnership with a company named as a winner, which was selected for two concepts, and the Navy has not clarified whether Anduril’s autonomy is inside either one.
Anduril president Christian Brose put the company’s position simply: “I would think the Navy would want to increase its options, not limit them.” [4]
Gary Chouest, who runs the Edison Chouest operation, and his wife have given at least $925,000 to Donald Trump or supporting groups since 2017, according to campaign filings reviewed by the Times. Chouest did not respond to the paper. [4]
PacMar and Havoc AI
PacMar Technologies is a Honolulu firm with small-USV heritage, working with Havoc AI on its entry. Public reporting describes a 100-foot autonomous vessel in trials, and snippets suggest it is an optimized PacMar hull originally built as a manned boat. [18]
Havoc AI is based in Providence, Rhode Island, which makes it the second New England company in this story and the one that won. Its investors include Trousdale Ventures, whose owner donated $1 million to Trump inaugural committees. Devin Nunes, the former congressman who ran Trump Media and now heads the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, is a Havoc director. [4]
Havoc CEO Paul Lwin told the Times his investors networked and alerted the company to contract opportunities, and that Nunes provides “advice and direction” but did not intervene with the White House or Navy. “And we would never ask,” he said. [4]
Birdon and the calendar problem
Birdon America, based in Bayou La Batre, Alabama, is known for Coast Guard work and Marine Corps prototype landing vessels. It signed a memorandum of understanding with Mythos AI on April 23, 2026, with Birdon handling platform development and integration and Mythos providing navigation, perception, command and control and mission software. [22]
Proposals were due April 17. The partnership was announced April 23.
That may simply mean the MOU formalized an existing working relationship. It is a straightforward question for Birdon, Mythos and the Navy, and nobody has answered it publicly.
Birdon plans a 400,000-square-foot Pensacola yard supported in part by a $76 million Triumph Gulf Coast grant, with operations expected in the third quarter of 2027. [23] That is after the tests conclude. It is future serial capacity, not the source of a 2026 test hull.
What the field actually reveals
Read together, the entrants did not offer variations on one design. They offered fundamentally different theories of how to satisfy the same nine requirements.
Leidos brought a legacy autonomous prototype lineage. Saronic brought a purpose-built venture shipyard. Blue Water brought a licensed commercial hull adapted to unmanned operation. HII brought prime integration executed through a small Gulf yard. Sea Machines and PacMar brought commercial autonomy applied to existing hull forms. Saildrone brought a proven fleet operator’s new large design. Birdon brought yard capacity paired with a software partner announced days after the deadline.
Six of those seven approaches are defensible engineering. The requirements document had to sort among them using pass-fail ratings, no clarifications and an undefined standard for what counts as a representative test asset.
There is one more distinction the marketplace blurred. A company’s ability to build a test vessel before Sept. 30, 2026, is a different question from a yard’s promised capacity in 2028. The solicitation graded manufacturing readiness and test-asset maturity as if they measured the same thing. Both plaintiffs argue that conflation is where the evaluation broke.
Part 3 examines the court filings in detail, including the legal question of whether federal courts can review these agreements at all.
References
- Saronic Technologies, Series D announcement
- Saronic Technologies, Team
- gCaptain, Navy Awards Saronic $392M Contract
- The New York Times, How a Promising Navy Drone Boat Program Got Mired in Politics
- USNI News, Saronic Announces Texas Site for New $3.2B Shipyard
- Blue Water Autonomy, Inc. v. United States, complaint
- Blue Water Autonomy, company site
- Olin College of Engineering, Scott N. Miller
- PR Newswire, Blue Water Autonomy Opens D.C. Office, Hires DARPA NOMARS Engineer
- PR Newswire, Blue Water Autonomy Announces $50 Million Series A
- PR Newswire, Blue Water Autonomy Introduces Liberty Class
- Blue Water Autonomy, 1,000 Hours of Ocean-Based Testing Surpassed
- Saildrone, Inc. v. United States, complaint
- USNI News, Navy Extends Saildrone USVs in SOUTHCOM
- Saildrone, Introducing Saildrone Spectre
- Fincantieri Marine Group, FMG to Build Saildrone’s Spectre
- HII, Romulus USVs
- USNI News, HII, Saronic Included in First MUSV Navy Prototype Tests
- Breaking Defense, Theodore Roosevelt Seahawk deployment
- Sea Machines, STEAMRACER Class Advances in MASC Program
- Anduril, Scaling Autonomous Surface Vessels
- WorkBoat, Birdon America, Mythos AI team on Navy MUSV opportunities
- The Maritime Executive, Birdon America and Mythos AI Jointly Pursuing Navy MUSV
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