The US Navy moved from testing robot boats to ordering them in batches on 29 September, when it announced production awards for 30 medium uncrewed surface vessels (MUSVs), ten each from Galliano Marine Services, HII (Huntington Ingalls Industries) and Saronic Technologies1. First deliveries are due before the end of fiscal 2027. Seven companies were picked in May for the Navy's MUSV marketplace at-sea demonstrations. Three came out with hulls to build.
Christopher Miller, the Navy's acting portfolio manager for robotic and autonomous systems, said the bids were scored on autonomy performance, design, production schedule and cost2. Weapons were not among the criteria Miller stated. Elsewhere in the US uncrewed fleet the Pentagon is still at the design stage: in July the Defense Innovation Unit picked Kongsberg Discovery and Oceaneering only to design an extra-large uncrewed submarine.
The Navy's announcement put the average procurement cost at $40m a vessel3, which would put the order near $1.2bn; that total is arithmetic on the Navy's average, not a Navy figure. The Navy used other transaction agreements, a fast prototype-to-production route outside standard contracting, and no per-yard value appeared in the reports reviewed. That route buys speed at the cost of visibility: until the Navy publishes what each yard is paid, nobody outside the programme can tell whether the three builders are being priced alike for the same hull.
