SURFACE NAVY 2025 — Textron Systems announced today it is unveiling a new family of autonomous maritime surface vessels, dubbed Tsunami, setting its sights on providing the kinds of low cost, multi-mission assets that the Pentagon in recent years has been seeking out.
“We look out across the market and evaluate our customers’ emerging needs,” David Phillips, a company executive, told reporters last week. “We continue discussions with the Navy … and we’ve been hearing an increased expression of interest in a small, rapidly deployable unmanned surface vehicle that can support a variety of missions beyond mine countermeasures.”
Phillips declined to name any specific contract opportunity the company was seeking in the near term through the new product line.
The family of vehicles include 24-, 25- and 28-foot variants that provide a payload capacity of up to 1,000 pounds and ranges between 600 and 1,000 nautical miles, according to a company statement. The USVs can also operate in up to sea state 4 conditions. (Sea states are a universally recognized measurement of ocean surface conditions, ranging from 0 to 9, with smaller numbers representing calmer weather and higher numbers indicating larger and more violent waves.) Textron designed the new USVs in conjunction with the Illinois-based Brunswick Corp.
When the US Navy began more aggressively pushing unmanned systems into its fleet starting in fiscal 2020, Textron’s “Common Unmanned Surface Vehicle” played an integral role in the testing for a key mine countermeasures program. Although a production contract for the USV the Navy plans to use was ultimately awarded to Bollinger Shipyards.
The advent of Textron’s new USVs follows a series of similar product launches that have cropped up from companies such as Saronic.
As a whole, the Navy’s operational forces have been eager to use and test commercially available unmanned systems when it makes sense — Saildrone has sailed its USVs in support of US 4th Fleet off the coast of South America and US 5th Fleet in the Middle East for the service’s experimental tech office Task Force 59.
Meanwhile, the Navy is building its own repertoire of unique unmanned vehicles that suit its needs through programs like the Extra Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicle awarded to Boeing and the small UUV, dubbed Lionfish, a program awarded to HII.
The enthusiasm for such vessels isn’t limited to the United States, either. Breaking Defense reported in November that France’s Naval Group, a key contractor for the French Navy and the country’s national shipbuilder, had unveiled its first ever USV, which it calls “Seaquest.”