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5h ago

Saildrone Debuts 52-Meter ‘Spectre’ Naval Drone, Submits It to Navy’s MUSV Marketplace

The move positions a modular, lower-cost unmanned warship for Navy testing.

The two Spectre variants
Saildrone's new 170-foot long Spectre class of medium unmanned surface vessels. The class features the Silent Endurance variant, on the left, and the Stealth Strike. Image: Saildrone
Saildrone Spectre USV scale model unveiled at Sea Air Space 2026
Spectre Silent Endurance (Saildrone illustration)

Overview

  • Saildrone unveiled the Spectre medium unmanned surface vessel at the Sea-Air-Space conference on Monday and confirmed it has entered the Navy’s new MUSV marketplace at an estimated price near $40 million.
  • Spectre comes in two versions, with a winged Silent Endurance model for quiet anti-submarine work and a low-profile Stealth Strike model without the wing for higher sprint speed and strike roles.
  • The 52-meter, roughly 250-ton platform uses twin electric and diesel drives for near-silent operation up to 12 knots and sprints to about 27–30 knots, with containerized payload space and more than 70 tons of capacity.
  • Fincantieri will build the aluminum hulls in Wisconsin at a rate Saildrone says could reach five per year, with construction starting soon and first sea trials targeted for early 2027, while American Magic Services will produce the composite wing in Florida.
  • Saildrone cites months of 1/7th-scale tow-tank tests in Denmark and ABS approval-in-principle, and partners have mapped payload paths that include Lockheed’s TB29 towed array and Mk70 launcher and Thales’s CAPTAS-4 sonar for distributed sensing and added firepower.