Saronic Corsair

The Saronic Corsair is a 24-foot (7.3-metre) autonomous surface vessel (ASV) built by Saronic Technologies of Texas, designed to operate at speeds exceeding 35 knots with a payload capacity of 1,000 lb (454 kg) over a range of 1,000 nautical miles. On 9 June 2026, a Corsair deployed by Task Force 59 located and recovered both crew members of a US Army AH-64 Apache helicopter that had been downed near the Strait of Hormuz. The vessel transported them to a handoff point where a helicopter completed the evacuation. Specialist outlets The War Zone and DefenseScoop, as well as Baird Maritime, reported it as the first unmanned-vessel combat personnel recovery on record; this claim has not been officially designated as a historic first by the US Department of Defense in publicly available statements, and should be understood as specialist-reported rather than formally certified.

Saronic unveiled the Corsair in October 2024 and in December 2025 won a production contract worth several hundred million dollars to deliver the vessel to the US Navy. The platform is equipped with 360-degree passive sensing for day and night operations and can operate autonomously as a single vessel or in a coordinated swarm. The Defence Innovation Unit listed the Corsair as a production-ready expeditionary small unmanned surface vehicle (sUSV).

The June 2026 rescue operation marks the Corsair's first publicly confirmed operational use in a combat theatre and has drawn significant Pentagon and allied attention to unmanned systems as a viable platform for search, rescue, and force-protection missions in contested maritime environments.