Saronic Wins Navy Production Contract for Marauder Autonomous Ship

30 September 2026
Edited By: Haley McQueen

Saronic Technologies has been awarded a production Other Transaction (OT) under the US Navy's Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel (MUSV) Marketplace for Marauder, the company's dual-use 180-foot autonomous ship. The Firm-Fixed Price award, executed under the authority of 10 U.S.C. § 4022(f), reflects a streamlined acquisition approach that enables the Navy to procure capabilities from non-traditional suppliers like Saronic with greater speed and flexibility.

(Image credit: Saronic Technologies)

The MUSV Marketplace is a Navy acquisition initiative designed to rapidly field unmanned surface vessels by drawing on mature, commercial-ready technology rather than a traditional multi-year program of record. In June 2026, the Navy initially downselected Saronic as one of seven companies to advance Marauder to an at-sea testing phase, positioning the company to compete for a production award under the program.

Under the initiative, Saronic successfully completed a rigorous evaluation of Marauder’s performance. Over eight days of continuous, 24/7 operations, Marauder completed more than 140 test scenarios without failure. The trials were designed to test the limits of the vessel’s autonomous capabilities and included autonomously tracking and maneuvering around a variety of vessels, as well as a battery of passive-perception tests.

In these passive-perception scenarios, Marauder was required to detect, track, and follow other vessels using only its passive onboard sensors, without reliance on active radar. This capability is regarded as one of the more difficult technical challenges in autonomous maritime systems. Every scenario in the evaluation was conducted with the same platform that the Navy has now put under contract, with the trials completed back-to-back in continuous operations to demonstrate the vessel’s real-world capabilities.

“Marauder went from initial design to on-the-water in under a year, and this evaluation demonstrated that the platform holds up under the Navy’s own toughest testing,” said Dino Mavrookas, CEO and Co-Founder of Saronic. “We’ve now flipped our third Marauder hull, with several more moving through the production line behind it. We can build at that pace because we designed the autonomy, software, hardware, and the production process side-by-side, as one system, rather than bolting them together after the fact. That’s what it means to be a vertically integrated shipbuilder, and it’s why we’ve been able to build and deliver at speed and scale.”

This award builds on Saronic’s existing production contract with the US Navy for Corsair, its 24-foot autonomous surface vessel. It also follows the Navy’s recently announced contract awarding Saronic the construction of Landing Craft Utility (LCU) vessels at Port Alpha, the company’s next-generation shipyard in Brownsville, Texas. These contracts reflect Saronic’s expanding role in supplying the Navy with both autonomous and manned vessels at production scale.