ARLINGTON, Va. – Integration of artificial intelligence (AI) with imaging sensors relieves operator workload on some drones and Navy aircraft and enables those operators to focus on decision making rather than sifting through overwhelming amounts of data, a sensor technology expert said.  

“We focus on automating the experience of using sensors — especially in the maritime environment but also overland — to make it easier and faster as well as better for crews to gain intelligence from the sensors that they use,” said Greg Davis, founder and CEO of Overwatch Imaging, an imagery intelligence technology company, in an interview with Seapower.  “That process uses artificial intelligence and autonomy to reduce the workload for the crews that are using sensors and also provide those crews with a super-human vision — to see more than they can naturally see by using the power of computing and AI.” 

“The Navy has this problem [in that] they collect a lot more data than they can look at,” Davis said. “Sometimes they don’t even collect data because they know they can’t look at it.”  

Davis likened the task as “needing to find a needle in a haystack.” 

Over watch’s software, called Automated Sensor Operator (ASO), uses a connection to a sensor that same as the crew would.  

“The crew interacts with a sensor through ethernet corrections or serial connections,” Davis said. “We use that same method of connecting to the sensor. We sit between the crew member and the sensor. From that position we can take command of the sensor and accomplish the job that the sensor operator wants to accomplish and do that in an automated way that allows the crew member to focus on something else. We provide alerts when there’s something to see.” 

No modifications to an aircraft’s mission computer are required, Davis said.  

“We add a small edge processor, a small, ruggedized computer that basically lives between the sensor and the operator workstation,” he said. “That small computer does the AI, the sensor autonomy, right there at the edge between the sensor and the crew in a way that does not change the existing airworthiness of the kit.” 

Overwatch puts the ASO software on sensors of its own designs and the ASO is “compatible with third-party sensors like sensors that are on Navy [MH-60] Seahawks or on the [P-8] Poseidon,” he said.  

Overwatch Imaging, based in Hood River, Oregon, has deep roots in the autonomous systems and drone industry, Davis said. It has had an existing SBIR contract for 2 years that started with a Navy requirement for AI-enabled video processing. Overwatch is expanding its work to include a contract with another unnamed agency. 

Davis noted that special operations forces, the Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection all have “the same characteristic of needing to search big areas to find small things. Once you find the small things, our crews are very good at responding.  

The company also is working on applying its technology to radar 

“We started building ASO for image-based sensors, but next up this summer for us is an ASO for other types of sensors,” Davis said. “Probably a synthetic-aperture radar will be the first extension for us beyond image-based sensors. But eventually we’ll probably make this for all of the sensors in use on naval aircraft and other kinds of sophisticated aircraft. The crew can focus on making decisions, rather than looking at a lot of raw data. Let’s use computers to look at the raw data. … freed up that crew time to do decision making rather than staring at a [computer] screen. 

By Richard R. Burgess, Senior Editor 

ARLINGTON, Va. Sigma Defense, a company with a prime contract for the Navy’s Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) program, is in the running for a down-select for the Next-Generation (NextGen) CANES program. 

CANES provides a core set of highly survivable, secure shipboard network services that is a programmatic and technical infrastructure consolidation of previously separately delivered and managed networks into a single computing environment. It can handle unclassified, secret, and sensitive compartmentalized information domains across the fleet with applications for email, chat, voice, and weapon system command and control. 

Sigma was awarded an OTA [Other Transactional Authority] for NextGen, said Ed Anderson, executive vice president for Innovative Mission Solutions, Sigma Defense, in an interview with Seapower. “It’s a clean sheet of paper but with existing hardware as a first go, and then we are going to get into hardware revisions to add capability and simplify the design. … We are in a down-selected prototype phase [with] at least one other competitor.”  

Anderson noted comments made in recent remarks by Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Daryl Caudle when he decried the lack of standardization of the various CANES versions in the fleet, and the need for a new CANES design to overcome some of the difficulties of the system. 

In February, SOLUTE, a Sigma Defense company, was awarded a seven-year, indefinite-delivery / indefinite-quantity contract by the Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, San Diego, California to provide technical and programmatic services for the CANES program. The three-year base contract is valued at $42 million and includes two, two-year option periods that can bring the overall value to $102 million, Sigma said in a release.  

“Through CANES, Sigma Defense will support the design, integration, and testing of systems that are part of the CANES architecture, provide software engineering support, including development and updates for all CANES platforms, ensure systems modernization and provide fleet readiness support,” the release said.  

Asked about the main challenge in the CANES installation on board ships, Anderson noted the “difficulty with installing is the duration required. We’re cutting holes in ships to get racks in, any change in hardware requires re-cutting those holes, a large amount of time re-routing cabling. So, one particular thing we are looking to do is, with the software change, what capability could we add? What hard spots could we alleviate? That is the key aim for our work on NextGen.” 

Julie Ferraro, Sigma’s vice president for Maritime Networks, told Seapower that CANES is installed on new ships and retrofitted on ships already delivered. 

“The intention for NextGen is that we will handle a “green field” and a “brown field,” clean install or with existing configurations at different levels of integration,” she said. 

Anderson said he expected the Navy to make a further down-select in June or July 2026. 

Sigma Defense is based at Perry, Georgia, with other offices in San Diego, California; Huntsville, Alabama; Turnersville New Jersey: Orlando, Florida; and Arlington, Virginia.

ARLINGTON, Va. — A Silicon Valley-based technology company is finding success in developing and producing small, silicon chip-based navigation systems ideal for unmanned systems operating in GPS-denied environments across land, air and sea. 

ANELLO Photonics, headquartered in Santa Clara, California, develops advanced navigation systems based on silicon photonics technology. The company integrates optical sensing and inertial navigation capabilities onto compact silicon chips to deliver high-performance positioning and guidance solutions.

Its core product, the SiPhOG (Silicon Photonic Optical Gyroscope), is a photonic integrated circuit that provides the functionality of a traditional fiber-optic inertial navigation system used in aircraft, ships, and submarines, while significantly reducing size, weight, power consumption, and system complexity.

“Fiber-optic gyros are high-end, navigation-grade sensors usually used for ICBMs, fighter jets, [and] submarines. They’re the gold standard, [and] often can navigate for weeks or months at a time,” said Dr. Kirstin Schauble, Vice President for Systems Engineering at ANELLO, in an interview with Seapower. “They’re fantastic sensors; the problem with them is that they are big, bulky, power hungry, and extremely expensive.” 

As such, fiber-optic gyros are impractical for small unmanned systems, particularly attritable systems.  

“We’ve taken the core physics behind traditional fiber-optic gyroscopes – systems that conventionally rely on numerous discrete optical components – and integrated them onto a compact silicon photonics chip,” said Schauble. “By integrating active and passive photonic elements onto a two by five millimeter chip , we’ve dramatically reduced the size and complexity of high-performance inertial navigation technology. The SiPhOG is also mass producible and highly robust, while still delivering the precision expected from traditional fiber-optic gyroscopes due to the significant innovations we’ve achieved in silicon photonics.”

Because the SiPhOG is relatively inexpensive, small, lightweight, and consumes little electric power, it is ideal for equipping swarms of autonomous systems such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unmanned surface vessels (USVs) and unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs).  

Schauble said the SiPhOG is ideal for Group 2/3 fixed wing drones, USVs, and 10-foot-to-200-foot vessels. 

“We’re able to bring high precision capability to lower-cost, lower size-weight-power form factors for smaller vessels that previously couldn’t afford FOG-level performance,” she said. 

The company’s Maritime Inertial Navigation System (INS) delivers precise and reliable navigation in GPS-denied or contested environments, enabling continuous positioning, heading, and motion tracking for autonomous maritime platforms.

ANELLO’s X3 IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) integrates seamlessly into existing systems and can operate either independently or as part of a larger navigation architecture, according to Schauble. Designed with an open interface and modular architecture, the X3 supports flexible plug-and-play integration across a wide range of aerial autonomous applications.

According to a company press release, ANELLO was selected in January by the Department of War (DoW) for a $20 million award under the Accelerate the Procurement and Fielding of Innovative Technologies (APFIT) program to fast-track the procurement, production, and scaling of ANELLO’s GPS-denied navigation technology. 

ANELLO’s SiPhOG-based Maritime INS is integrated on several autonomous systems, including HavocAI’s USVs and BlackSea Technologies’ Chaser USV. 

Schauble said ANELLO’s workforce is expanding from its current 35-to-40 personnel. 

“We can’t build these things fast enough,” she said commenting on the flood of orders. 

By Richard R. Burgess, Senior Editor 

ARLINGTON, Va. — A U.S. Navy T-45C Goshawk jet training aircraft crashed May 26, 2026, in Mississippi. The two aviators in the crew ejected successfully. 

The T-45C crashed near Shuqualak, Mississippi, according to a post by television station WTOK. 

The T-45C was assigned to Training Air Wing One, based at Naval Air Station Meridian, Mississippi. 

According to an aviation expert, the aircraft was the 35th T-45 to be lost in mishaps since the aircraft began service in 1991. 

The Navy is in the process of selecting a new training aircraft to replace the T-45. 

ARLINGTON, Va. — Blue Ops Inc. Marine, a division of Red Cat Holdings, is building its newest combat semi-autonomous uncrewed surface vessel (USV) in the United States for a set of undisclosed customers.

The Blue Ops Variant 7 (V7) is capable of a variety of missions, including kamikaze strike, anti-USV, counter-UAS, anti-helicopter, launching precision munitions, said Barry Hinckley, president of Blue Ops Marine, in an interview with Seapower.

The V7 can carry an 1,800-pound shaped-charge warhead for a kamikaze mission. For the counter-UAS mission, the V7 is armed with the Bullfrog, a .50-caliber machine gun that has demonstrated that “with 5 shots it can take down a 9-inch UAV going 100 miles per hour at 500 meters,” Hinckley said.

 The company is testing launching Red Cat’s ISR UAVs from the V7.

“You can project our boat 800 miles at 40 knots and then launch a UAV to go out 30 kilometers,” Hinckley said.

Introducing the Variant 7, an advanced unmanned surface vessel designed for extended range, endurance, and increased payload capacity. Built on operational insights and powered by Blue Ops’ open MOSA architecture with proprietary semi-autonomous command and control, the Variant 7 supports mission-adaptable operations, including integrated UAV launch and recovery. The Variant 7 enhances flexibility for U.S. and allied forces across complex maritime environments.

Blue Ops’ earlier USVs have logged 10,000 combat hours of operating time in live combat missions, he said, with USVs built in Europe.

“We initially did a deal with a European company that had Ukrainian roots and we were building boats in Western Europe that were called Version 2,” he said. “We had a difference of opinion on how we would address the technology architecture. We wanted an open, modular solution, which is what our American end-users have been asking for, which is: you guys focus on building a great boat and we’ll let the technology innovation — whether its payload, sensor, communications, autonomy — [be applied as needed].  Our former European/Ukrainian partners wanted really wanted to control the tech pack from the top to bottom and have us re-sell it here. It was an amicable separation. We separated in December.”

The V7 is the only boat Blue Ops is currently building, he said.

Red Cat Holdings announced in a release last September that Blue Ops was partnering with Hogdon Shipbuilding to build the first five prototype USVs of the V7 design. Hogdon’s facilities in the Boothbay region of Maine and in Damariscotta, Maine, also provided a site for research and development for Blue Ops.

Hinckley praised the high quality and small batch production in Maine but for expansion chose the warmer clime of Valdosta, Georgia, where the V7 is now in mass production in a leased 155,000-square-foot facility.

“This boat [the V7] was an idea in August [2025],” Hinckley said. “We went into production in October; we went into the water in late December/early January. Unveiling to military officials on February 26. And to Wall Street guests on Feb. 27. With UAV payloads.”

Hinckley said Blue Ops has customers for the V7, but he declined to name them.

“We’re working with several groups right now,” he said.

Hinckley said that a single V7 costs $695,000, but with quantities more than 100 the price comes down to the mid-$500,000s; for more than 200 the price is close to $525,000.

By Richard R. Burgess, Senior Editor 

ARLINGTON, Va. — Robots and other unmanned systems are advocated to relieve humans for the “dull, dirty, and dangerous” jobs and missions the Navy is called upon to complete. One example is the increasing use of robotics for assessment and maintenance of ship surfaces such as the flight decks, weather decks, and well desks as applicable of amphibious warfare ships and guided-missile destroyers. Artificial intelligence is being added to speed up the processes. 

Flight decks are coated with non-skid, a rough coating that reduces the slickness of the decks, enhancing the safety of operations sea for personnel, aircraft, and ground support equipment. The coating needs to be replaced periodically as it is worn down by operations. Assessing that need is being accomplished by Gecko’s Komodo robots.   

The U.S. Navy and the General Services Administration have awarded Gecko Robotics of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a contract with a ceiling of $71 million “to deploy artificial intelligence and robotics to assess and maintain the health of military assets,” the company said in a release. “Gecko will start work with 18 ships [per year] in the U.S. Pacific Fleet with the initial award worth up to $54million over a five-year period. 

“The Chief of Naval Operations has set a target of 80% fleet readiness, which Gecko will have a crucial role in helping to meet,” Gecko said. “Gecko’s advanced AI and robotic technology identify repairs up to 50 times faster and more accurately than manual methods, reducing maintenance delays and boosting battle readiness. This work will be carried out across destroyers, amphibious warships, and littoral combat ships.” 

Gecko’s Komodo robot is designed to assess the extent of corrosion of non-skid, said Troy Demmer, co-founder and president of Gecko, in an interview with Seapower. The crawling robot uses “electromagnetic acoustic conduction to create an ultrasonic waveform that can penetrate that non-skid down to the base metal and be able to assess any sort of corrosion.” 

The Komodo is able to operate during different sea states on the ship’s flight deck, enabling an assessment of the deck at sea six to 12 months before the ship enters a maintenance availability, reducing the time spent on the task of refurbishing the deck. The robot rolls along like a paint roller, its sensor scanning the deck in its passes, taking measurements, and recording those data points on a map display of a laptop computer. The measurements allow the Navy to determine the areas of the deck that need attention for non-skid maintenance. 

Gecko also uses its Toka wall-climbing robots to scaling U.S. Navy ship hulls in order to assess corrosion. 

Demmer expects the U.S. Naval Surface Force Atlantic to request Gecko’s services in the future in a separate contract. 

“Where value hasn’t improved, that’s where opportunity lives. Cracking the cost equation is just as important as cracking the physics equation,” said Justin Fanelli, Chief Technology Officer for the Department of the Navy, quoted by Geck in its release. ”We’re now seeing solutions that make innovation adoption easier and in doing so save time, money and risk. When these American companies, pure play defense and dual use companies like Gecko Robotics, choose to do hard things and move the needle on our outcome metrics, not by percentage points but by orders of magnitude, it results in faster, better portfolio management.” 

Gecko employs about 275 personnel, half of them based in Pittsburgh. 

By Richard R. Burgess, Senior Editor 

ARLINGTON, Va. — The seabeds of the world’s oceans are becoming less mysterious, thanks to companies like Terradepth, a company that provides its clients with geospatial surveys of the seabed to meet their economic, defense, or scientific needs. 

Terradepth Inc., founded in 2018 and based in Austin, Texas, with a facility in Panama Beach, Florida, provides customized robotic surveys of the seabed using autonomous unmanned underwater vehicles (AUVs) and provides data to its customers through its Absolute Ocean intelligence layer software platform for their awareness of their ocean systems and infrastructure.  

“Absolute Ocean is a high-resolution map that pulls data from multiple information sources,” said Joe Wolfel, Terradepth founder and chief executive officer, in an interview with Seapower, noting that the data is collected and aggregated into one spot. “That ecosystem drives better and faster decision making [for customers] at scale.” 

Wolfel explained that Terradepth takes some ocean data — from NOAA, for example — into the Absolute Ocean data platform that is publicly available to its customers.  

“A lot of times customers want to keep their data private and secure, so they have access to al of the publicly available data and obviously their own data holdings in the geospatial platform, Absolute Ocean,” he said.  

Wolfel told Seapower that his company builds and deploys its own AUVs and also uses AUVs built by other companies “to the extent that it makes sense.”  The company deploys teams equipped with AUVs to areas to be surveyed. The teams can fly to ports worldwide and deploy on vessels of opportunity to execute their surveys. He said the “major cost driver of ocean data acquisition is the requirement for that surface vessel.”  

Terradepth’s missions are varied: looking for mines, a leak in an oil pipeline, a break in a data transmission cable. Its data is used in sectors including defense and national security; maritime insurance, government; regulation; scientific research, offshore energy; and telecommunications, according to the company website. 

Terradepth cooperates with other ocean technology companies such as Saildrone, Anduril, Kongsberg, and Oceaneering. Many of its customers and missions are not disclosable. Its customers have included NOAA. The U.S. Navy uses the company software for undersea applications.  

Wolfel is a Naval Academy graduate, a former Navy SEAL officer who later worked for the McCrystal Group where he was exposed to a lot of emerging technologies, including Gate Technologies, that made “about half the world’s data storage,” he said. He recalled the 2005 collision of the attack submarine USS San Francisco with an uncharted seamount and how the incident highlighted the dearth of knowledge about the world’s seabeds. 

“There was just a huge gap in our understanding of that environment,” he said. “That stuck with me … and gave me the opportunity to do something special.” 

“We’re trying to drastically reduce human cognitive load with respect to high-resolution seabed data,” Wolfel said. “The amount of human involvement that occurs throughout that ocean operating system between data acquisition, data processing; before we built Absolute Ocean, we were keeping data on hard disk drives and Fedexing it around the world, or hand carrying them. We have to be able to reduce human in the loop, human on the loop with respect to that entire ecosystem,” referring to the ocean’s 310 billion square kilometers of seabed.  

ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Navy has awarded Raytheon a $335 million contract modification to “exercise options and provide funding for the manufacturing, assembly, test, and delivery of Standard Missile-6 Tactical All-Up Rounds,” according to an April 30, 2026, Department of War contract announcement.

The SM-6, deployed on U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyers and cruisers, has featured heavily in combat in actions in the Middle East since 2024 against Houthi and Iranian missiles. The Navy has received funding to replenish and increase stocks of missiles to maintain readiness. 

This contract modification, awarded April 24, is funded weapons procurement accounts for fiscal years 2025 and 2026.

“Standard Missile-6 is a critical, combat-proven system that provides a vital layer of protection for ships and Sailors — a capability that has never been more critical than it is today,” said Phil Jasper, president of Raytheon. “Contracts of this nature are an essential step in sustaining production, and we remain focused on enhancing our operations to meet unprecedented demand. To support this growth, Raytheon has invested nearly $900 million over the last three years to expand capacity at key sites, including Tucson, Arizona, and Huntsville, Alabama. These investments paired with the clear demand signal will help ensure we deliver these critical munitions at the speed of the mission.”

By Richard R. Burgess, Senior Editor 

ARLINGTON, Va. — Raytheon is demonstrating its Next-Generation Jammer Mid-Band (NGJ-MB) electronic attack arrays for ground-based or shipboard use, particularly in a counter-UAS (unmanned aerial system) role. 

The NGJ-MB currently serves in the airborne electronic attack role on the Navy’s EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft. Raytheon is looking at expanding its use in other domains. One reason is to use non-kinetic solutions to save on ammunition. 

“What we’re finding with high munitions usage, a lot of our customers are looking for non-kinetic options in products and capabilities to solve their problems,” said Camille Wilson, vice president for Requirements and Capabilities for the Raytheon Naval Power sector. 

“From a defense perspective, we need a number of different solutions,” Wilson said. 

She said that the NGJ-MB array itself can be used for such applications. 

“We’ve explored one array up to two, three, four arrays depending on what effect you need, what electric power out you need,” Wilson said. “With one array I could do a myriad of different things. I could use it on a vehicle. I could use a smaller system. If I wanted more capability and more power out or coverage, I could add more arrays. The interesting thing about the land-based variation that we’re looking at is I don’t have the same power and cooling constraints as I do on the airborne side, so there’s a lot more that we could do with it. There are a lot more configurations that we could use those arrays for.” 

Wilson was not at liberty to discuss “the full complement of capabilities for a ground-or-ship-based NGJ array, but what a lot of our customers are asking for is counter-UAS.” 

She noted that software changes on the NGJ-MB would be required for the counter-UAS role, but that “taking something that is in production, TRL-9 [Technology Readiness Level 9], that we know works, can we make a few software tweaks and optimize for a different mission set?”  

She said that in the counter-UAS role, the NGJ-MB could be used to jam or decoy drones. 

Raytheon has a demonstration system and is actively demonstrating the ground-based electronic attack capability, Wilson said. “We have multiple U.S. Government and departments and entities [with which] we’re discussing options for deployment. 

By Richard R. Burgess, Senior Editor 

ARLINGTON, Va. — The Navy’s requirement to develop a method of launching and — more challenging — recovering autonomous underwater vehicles from torpedo tubes of submarines is being met by L3Harris Technologies (Booth 937), which has been awarded an Other Transaction Authority contract from the Department of Defense’s Defense Innovation Unit to deliver the Torpedo Tube Launch and Recovery (TTLR) system. 

The TTLR has demonstrated its ability to launch and recover Iver4 900 AUVs through attach submarine torpedo tubes.  

“The Torpedo Tube Launch and Recovery system is not a future capability, it’s answering combatant commander needs today,” Nino DiCosmo, president, Maritime, Space & Mission Systems, L3Harris, said in a company release. “Our system is the first to successfully launch and recover AUVs from a submarine, providing commanders flexibility for persistent undersea operations and maintaining essential stealth.” 

The Iver4 900 AUV is payload agnostic, said J.R. Gear, vice president and general manager of Integrated Systems and Encryption for L3Harris, in an interview, noting the system would be capable of missions such as seafloor mapping, counter-mine warfare and other intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance missions.  

“We try to build it with some modular interfaces that you could have one type of mission one day from a submarine and then swap out the sensor and swap out the batteries and [gain] maybe a little bit more range and endurance or whatever and tailor the vehicle for today’s mission,” he said. “Very adaptable.”  

Gear was not at liberty to describe the details of how the AUV swims back into the torpedo tube, citing proprietary restrictions. But he did say the recovery is “completely autonomous.” 

The TTLR includes a sleeve that fits inside the torpedo tube, called a SAFECAP, of Shock and Fire Enclosure, from which the IVER4 900 AUV swims out and is later recovered. Importantly, no structural modifications to the submarine are required.  

“Whether it [the AUV] swims out with the nose out or backs out, it’s payload dependent on how it leaves,” Gear said. “It literally swims away, performs its mission, and then when it returns, it’s kind of a push of a button and it will swim back into that SAFECAP of the torpedo enclosure. We’ve tested this on several different types of submarines, and I think we’re the first also that have done this on both the United States Navy and the Royal Navy.” 

Gear said the “submarine has to operate in an envelope that’s going to be compatible with the UUV. We can’t discuss that here but it’s very friendly to the mission. You put the SAFECAP in [the torpedo tube], the Iver goes in there with the guides, you lock it up and let it go, and it swims on out and does its thing autonomously. And when it’s finished with its mission, it comes back, and with a command, a single command, it will come back into the sub.”  

The SAFECAP sleeve can be removed inside the submarine for the torpedo tube to be used for torpedoes or other payloads. 

“The system delivers the first U.S. Navy submarine- and aviation-approved AUV lithium-ion battery technology, enabling longer-duration missions with hot-swap capability for continuous operations,” L3Harris said in a March 26 release. “TTLR’s interoperability across multiple submarine classes and allied platforms advances the Navy’s manned-unmanned teaming vision and demonstrates AUKUS Pillar 2 collaboration.”  

Gear was not at liberty to discuss the value of the contract award or the quantity of the order. He did say a TTLR shipset includes two AUVs with a sustainment package that includes some payloads and spare parts. The TTLRs are being built at the company’s Fall River, Massachusetts, facility. 

Gear declined to say when deliveries of the TTLR will begin, only, “we’ve been looking forward to this working with the Navy for a little while and ready to go if and when the Navy was ready. And so, they’re ready now. The pump is primed and we’re starting to execute on that contract.”