The USV Race Is Over.The Question Now Is Who Scales.

On May 2, 2025, a Magura V7 maritime drone shot down up to two Su-30SM fighter jets over the Black Sea. From a boat. A boat that had no crew on board.

That is the most consequential autonomous naval weapons milestone of 2025. It validated a capability progression that no Western program has publicly demonstrated, and it received a fraction of the analysis generated by a US Navy solicitation document issued three months later. That imbalance tells you something important about where the serious thinking is happening, and where it isn't.

The global uncrewed surface vessel race has entered its production phase. Twelve months ago this was still a story about prototypes and proof-of-concept demonstrations. Not anymore. The United States awarded its first major USV production contract. China sailed the world's largest armed USV. The UK deployed a remotely operated escort capability in weeks. Australia's Bluebottles quietly racked up 23,000 nautical miles of live border surveillance. And Ukraine destroyed more than fifteen Russian warships with systems that cost a fraction of what they sank.

What separates the countries that are winning this race from those still drafting requirements? Speed. And the speed gap is widening, not narrowing.

The headline program is MASC, the Modular Attack Surface Craft. The Navy merged its Large and Medium Unmanned Surface Vessel programs into a single solicitation in July 2025, issuing through Other Transaction Authority with white papers due in a matter of weeks. Three variants, commercial ABS standards, multi-shipyard repairability. First deliveries targeted within 18 months of prototype award. CNO Daryl Caudle put it plainly: “The Large Unmanned Surface Vessel was an exquisite single-mission vessel, with capabilities that made it mission-restricted and unaffordable.” RADM William Daly added: “Designs already exist. We must not over-spec this.”

Good instincts. But MASC is still a solicitation. Prototype selection is 'early 2026' at best. Full production is years away.

The Saronic contract tells a different story. On December 8, at the Reagan National Defense Forum, Secretary of the Navy John Phelan announced a $392 million production OTA for Saronic's Corsair vessel. Nearly $200 million obligated at award. A 24-foot modular autonomous surface vessel, roughly 1,000 lbs of payload, 1,000-plus nautical miles at 35-plus knots. Prototype to production contract in under twelve months. Phelan's framing: “Prototype to production in under 12 months. The Saronic OTA proves how we'll build a hybrid manned-unmanned Fleet: open competition, real contracts, real hardware for Sailors and Marines not slides. This is now the standard.”

Saronic simultaneously announced a $300 million expansion of its Franklin, Louisiana shipyard. That's not a company hedging its bets on a pilot contract. That's a company that believes in the volume. Two 150-foot Marauder vessels are already under construction.

The tension between MASC and Saronic is the defining dynamic in US naval autonomy right now. MASC is the institutional program that will eventually matter at scale. Saronic is the acquisition model that works at wartime speed. The Navy needs both to work, and the track records so far are not equivalent.

One more number worth sitting with: the FY2026 DoD autonomy budget is $13.4 billion. The Navy's share alone is $5.3 billion, up $2.2 billion from last year. The reconciliation bill separately allocates $5.1 billion specifically for unmanned vessel fleet expansion. 

The money is real. The question is delivery rate.

Beyond MASC and Saronic, the field is crowded, and getting more so. Boston-based Blue Water Autonomy announced its Liberty class this month: a 190-foot, 800-ton autonomous patrol vessel based on Damen’s Stan Patrol 6009, Google Ventures-backed, with a 10,000 nautical mile design range and 150 tons of payload including missile launchers. Production starts at Conrad Shipyard in Louisiana next month, first delivery later this year. No owned shipyard. CEO Rylan Hamilton’s framing at WEST 2026 was candid: the Navy needs to see these vessels “in the water operating every single day with the fleet” before it can figure out how many it actually wants. That is a reasonable description of where things stand. Bryan Clark at the Hudson Institute is blunt about the consolidation math. The Navy, he argues, will sustain enough orders to keep two medium and large USV companies in business, not twelve. Every company in the field believes it will be one of the two. That belief is not universally well-founded. 

For his part, Caudle’s explanation for the Navy’s measured pace is worth taking seriously. The service isn’t indecisive — it’s building C2 structures, training pipelines, and sustainment models that procurement can actually scale on top of. UUV squadrons, USV flotillas, the organisational scaffolding going up in parallel with the contracts. Without it, Hamilton’s concern materialises: platforms arrive and sit idle because no one has worked out how to operate them. The bubble and the institutional constraint are related problems, not separate ones.

In October 2025, five 7.2-metre Rattler USVs operated off Scotland for 72 continuous hours, remotely controlled from HMS Patrick Blackett moored in Portsmouth, 500 miles away. They escorted HMS Tyne and HMS Stirling Castle. From concept to operational deployment: somewhere between two and four months, depending on which source you believe. The procurement itself was concluded in weeks.

SYOS, the UK-New Zealand company behind the Rattlers (manufacturing in Fareham, Hampshire), is producing 50 USVs per month. Many going to Ukraine.

First Sea Lord General Sir Gwyn Jenkins set the ambition at DSEI in September: “It is my aim to have the first of our uncrewed escort ships sailing alongside our RN warships within the next two years.” The Strategic Defence Review codified it: 'uncrewed wherever possible; crewed only where necessary.'

Atlantic Bastion, announced in December, is the vision at scale. Phase 1 (Atlantic Net) builds out AI-powered acoustic detection, connecting ships, submarines, aircraft and unmanned vessels through a digital targeting web. Phase 2 adds the Type 92 'sloop' ASW USV and Type 93 XLUUV. Helsing's SG-1 Fathom glider with Lura acoustic software is the core sensor technology. Private investment is matching government funding at a 4:1 ratio, totalling around £0.5 billion in R&D.

But the UK is also the only navy publicly wrestling with what this actually means institutionally. RAN officer Matthew Bell's January 2026 Navy Lookout analysis is worth reading carefully. The accountability gaps are real: 'Who goes to court martial when a robot fails?' 'Command by direction' versus decentralized autonomy. Erosion of sea sense for remote operators. Damage control that simply does not exist when there's no crew. His phrase 'the Old Navy resists the New Navy with fierce institutional inertia' is a diagnosis, not a criticism. Every navy faces this. The UK is the only one discussing it openly.

Australia has committed to six LOSVs through the Henderson Defence Precinct, each with 32-cell Mk41 VLS and Aegis Baseline 9 combat system. The A$25 billion precinct investment is real. Entry into service: mid-2030s.

The Surface Fleet Review recommended acquiring LOSVs as a 'fast follower' of the US program. The problem: the US program that Australia is following has since been restructured entirely. Australian documentation still references LUSV. The US Navy has moved on to MASC. The design constraints are shifting. The timeline is long. And RADM William Daly, who leads US unmanned surface programs, has expressed skepticism about widespread LUSV deployment at scale.

That is a sovereign dependency problem dressed up as procurement strategy.

The smarter Australian capability story isn't the LOSVs. It's Ocius. Four Bluebottle USVs have accumulated 23,000 nautical miles of unescorted maritime surveillance patrols off Western Australia for Maritime Border Command. A single 165-day unescorted deployment is now on the record. In a 30-day trial, they identified 19 boats violating protected marine areas. Ocius has a forward operating base in Darwin. CEO Robert Dane's framing: 'Bluebottles were designed from day one to be anti-submarine warfare USVs.'

The Saildrone-Thales BlueSentry integration matters too. Twenty-six continuous days off California, 96% uptime, autonomously detecting and classifying underwater threats. ONR-funded. Explicitly positioned under AUKUS Pillar 2. Australian Ambassador Kevin Rudd attended the christening of the first production ThayerMahan Outpost vessel in April 2025.

Australia is hedging through domestic autonomy software development: Austal's AROS platform controller, Greenroom Robotics' GAMA (with ITAR exemption under AUKUS), the Leidos Sea Archer. The hedge is smart. It just shouldn't be the plan B.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries unveiled its combat USV at DSEI Japan in May 2025. Forty to fifty metres, around 300 tons, containerised armament, AI target classification, CoasTitan C2 system. Sea trials target: end of 2027. R&D budget: approximately $160 million. The development is real. The timeline is measured.

The strategic driver is straightforward. China fields roughly 88-plus modern destroyers and frigates. Japan operates around 49-50 surface combatants. The numerical gap is structural and widening. Japan's SHIELD program (FY2027 establishment, ¥100.1 billion in the FY2026 budget) targets an 'asymmetrical defense architecture' of UAVs, USVs and UUVs. The concept of operations is sound. The timeline for delivery is not.

The Mogami-class as a USV mothership platform is the operational bright spot. On June 15, the lead ship conducted its first mine disposal drill using a USV, off Iwo-To Island. The class has a built-in rear ramp for deploying and recovering unmanned vehicles. The 12th and final Mogami was launched in December. Australia selected the upgraded Mogami class for its General Purpose Frigate program in August. The integration capability is in the water.

What's not yet clear: interoperability with US systems. Japan's sovereign development path gives it capability. Whether that capability speaks the same language as MASC and AUKUS platforms is an open question.

The JARI-USV-A is 58 metres, somewhere between 300 and 500 tons depending on which source you trust (NAVDEX model, Janes, and H.I. Sutton all give different figures), 40-plus knots, 4,000 nautical mile range, and carries a VLS with 4 to 12 cells, torpedo tubes, AESA radar, a helipad for VTOL UAVs, and provision for AUVs. It appeared at Guangzhou Shipyard International in late October 2024, sailed to Zhuhai on November 8, and was displayed at Airshow China 2024. It is the largest and most heavily armed USV afloat globally.

It is also one hull, and the PLAN has not adopted it. EDR Magazine assessed in February 2025: 'There is currently no information on whether the PLA Navy has adopted the only JARI-USV-A that has undergone testing.' H.I. Sutton: 'It is unclear whether any of these projects enjoys real Chinese Navy support.' The War Zone flagged the same uncertainty. Calling it a benchmark for Western programs overstates what one unconfirmed demonstrator represents.

The actual threat is not the vessel. It's the infrastructure behind it.

China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) operates the shipyard capacity to go from demonstrator to series production in a timeline no Western navy can match. The yards currently outbuilding every Western navy combined are the same yards that could pivot to USV volume production. ASPI's December 2025 update found China leading in 66 of 74 critical technology areas, up from 57 of 64. Radar, drones, and swarming robotics are among the 24 technologies at 'high risk' of Chinese monopoly.

That latent capacity is the benchmark. Not the single hull in Zhuhai.

Ukraine's 385th USV Brigade, the world's first dedicated military USV unit, established in August 2023, has destroyed more than 15 Russian warships and inflicted over $500 million in damages. The Magura V5 sank a missile corvette, a landing ship, and a patrol vessel in the space of five weeks in early 2024. On December 31, a Magura V5 with an R-73 missile shot down a Russian Mi-8 helicopter: the first USV-to-aircraft kill. Then came the Su-30SM jets in May.

In December 2025, a 'Sub Sea Baby' UUV attacked an Improved Kilo-class submarine at Novorossiysk. UK MoD assessed 'highly likely significant damage.' That is the assessed first successful UUV strike on a submarine in combat.

RUSI's summary: 'The success of Ukraine's uncrewed surface vessels is indisputable. The Russian Navy is now on the defensive.'

Norway's contribution is less dramatic and more strategically durable. The Maritime Capability Coalition, co-led with the UK, allocated NOK 6.7 billion (around 580 million euros) for 2025. Kongsberg signed MoUs in June to equip Ukrainian-built USVs with PROTECTOR remote weapon stations, opened a permanent Kyiv office, and announced Seawolf USV production in Poland (PLN 250 million investment). The Seawolf is a 7.7-metre drone boat carrying four AIM-9 missiles plus an M2 machine gun.

Twenty-four NATO nations gained operational insights at REPMUS 2025, where Ukrainian forces served as the adversarial red team. NATO's JATEC is capturing lessons learned. The data pipeline exists. Whether Western procurement processes absorb it at anything like the speed it's being generated is a different question.

The country-by-country picture resolves into a single, uncomfortable observation: the organisations producing the most operationally valuable data are moving at startup speed, and the organisations with the most procurement budget are moving at institutional speed. Ukraine iterates in weeks. MASC will take years. The Bluebottle has 23,000 nautical miles of live operational data. Australia's LOSVs are a decade out.

Two developments worth watching closely in the next six months. First, the MASC prototype down-select: which companies survive the 720-continuous-hour propulsion and electrical demonstration requirement mandated under NDAA Section 122. That threshold will eliminate contenders, and the field is not well telegraphed yet. Second, the AUKUS interoperability question for Australian and Japanese autonomous platforms. The gap between domestic development and trilateral standards is where procurement risk concentrates.

One number to close on: the DoD-wide autonomy budget for FY2026 is $13.4 billion. That is the financial commitment. Whether the acquisition models match it in speed is the story of the next two years. Clark’s consolidation thesis sharpens the question: the Navy will sustain enough volume to keep two players in the medium and large USV space viable. The rest are competing for a bubble that will eventually deflate. What separates the survivors from the casualties isn’t just technology — it’s which companies can bridge the gap between procurement signal and actual volume orders. MASC is the signal. The orders are years away. That gap is where the field thins out.

We deep dive into Marine Materials Readiness and ask: Which ocean-derived materials are actually deployment-ready in 2026? who is producing them at scale? and Why is China's seawater-to-plastic industrial chain getting less scrutiny than it deserves? If you are tracking the intersection of defense procurement and sustainability mandates, this is the one to read.

Since you have been, thanks for reading.

Cheers 

Mick

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