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| Saildrone ASW Mesh Network |
By Special Naval Affairs Correspondent
April 10, 2025
In the vast, often opaque expanse of the world's oceans, a new defensive capability is emerging that could fundamentally alter the balance of naval power. Recent breakthroughs in maritime drone technology, particularly the integration of advanced sonar arrays with autonomous surface vessels like the Saildrone Surveyor, are creating the possibility of persistent, networked anti-submarine detection systems that operate with minimal human intervention.
Game-Changing Partnership Demonstrates Capability
Earlier this week, Saildrone and Thales Australia announced the successful demonstration of a groundbreaking system for autonomous long-endurance undersea maritime domain awareness. Their integration of the BlueSentry thin-line towed array with the Saildrone Surveyor has shown promising results in extensive sea trials conducted off the California coast, where the system demonstrated its ability to effectively detect and classify both underwater and surface threats while reporting this information to decision makers in real time.
The trials showed that under wind propulsion, the Surveyor provided a near-zero self-noise environment, significantly improving the detection capabilities of the BlueSentry sonar system. The system operated continuously for 26 days and maintained an uptime greater than 96%, showcasing its remarkable reliability.
The Saildrone Advantage
At 20 meters (65 feet) long and weighing 15 tons, the Saildrone Surveyor represents a significant advancement in unmanned surface vehicle (USV) technology. Built to the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) Light Warship code, the Surveyor is currently the world's largest unmanned, autonomous vehicle class in operation.
What makes these vessels particularly suitable for anti-submarine operations is their unique propulsion system. Saildrone USVs combine wind propulsion and solar technology, allowing them to stay at sea longer than any other unmanned system on the market while maintaining quiet operations with low environmental impact.
Saildrone's Surveyor-class USVs are specifically designed for persistent, wide-area maritime domain awareness missions. They use a combination of radar, cameras, acoustics, and advanced machine learning to deliver comprehensive situational awareness remotely from anywhere in the world.
Creating a Maritime Mesh Defense Network
Naval experts suggest that the real power of these systems would come from deploying them in coordinated networks. Similar concepts are already being explored in Europe through the Maritime Unmanned Anti-Submarine System (MUSAS), which aims to develop advanced command, control, and communications architecture for anti-submarine warfare using cutting-edge technology and artificial intelligence.
A surface combatant could potentially deploy a swarm of drones that creates a mesh network capable of cooperatively searching broad areas of the ocean for enemy ships and submarines, with the information passed back to the ship in real time and from there distributed throughout the battlespace.
Defense analysts point out that such systems could provide particular advantages in contested areas where traditional manned platforms might be at risk.
Challenges to Submarine Stealth
Traditional submarine stealth has relied on acoustic quieting, hull designs, and other methods to avoid detection. However, the emergence of distributed sensor networks coupled with artificial intelligence and data processing capabilities represents a significant challenge to these stealth advantages.
While ASW has always been a game of hide and seek with the advantage generally favoring the submarine, technological changes facilitated by the digital revolution may gradually make submarine detection more reliable. Distributed remote sensing networks, which link interoperable manned and unmanned sensor platforms together as nodes in a larger system of systems, could scale up persistent observation across wider areas of the ocean.
Financial and Strategic Implications
The development of these drone-based systems could offer significant cost advantages over traditional anti-submarine warfare platforms like dedicated ships or aircraft.
Unlike fixed seafloor surveillance systems, which are expensive to place and maintain, networks of autonomous drone nodes can provide sensing, processing, and real-time communication of critical subsea information at a much lower cost point. This makes the technology potentially disruptive in the field of undersea surveillance.
Richard Jenkins, founder and CEO of Saildrone, has emphasized this point, noting that "The extreme endurance of the system allows us to put eyes and ears in places that were previously out of reach, at a cost point orders of magnitude below traditional manned surveillance platforms."
Looking to the Future
As naval rivalries intensify in regions like the Indo-Pacific, these autonomous systems may become increasingly important strategic assets. Saildrone and Thales Australia have indicated they are ready to deploy these systems at scale, creating a network of autonomous, self-sustaining surveillance assets to enhance national security in alignment with AUKUS Pillar 2 undersea warfare requirements.
With tensions rising in several maritime theaters and submarine capabilities advancing among potential adversaries, the race to develop and deploy such systems may become an increasingly important aspect of naval competition in the coming decade.
Sources:
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Saildrone and Thales Demonstrate Advanced Capability for Autonomous Anti-Submarine Warfare
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Saildrone and Thales Australia Demonstrate Game-changing Capability for Autonomous ASW
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Long Endurance Maritime Drones Could Form Anti-Submarine Defense Mesh
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The Compelling Case For Arming U.S. Navy Warships With Drone Swarms
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Submarine Surveillance System That's Rapidly Deployable, Unpredictable Unveiled By Anduril
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Submarine Stealth Vs. AI, Drones, and Sensor Networks - IEEE Spectrum
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Prospects for game-changers in submarine-detection technology
Long Endurance Maritime Drones Could Form Anti-Submarine Defense Mesh - autoevolution
Finding enemy submarines or other dangers in friendly waters has never been an easy task. That's owed to the complexities (including logistics, cost, and effectiveness) of operating the required hardware in such a vast environment, but also to the technologies fielded by the opposing side. This task, however, could become a lot easier now that something called the Saildrone Surveyor proved it could work with a thin-line towed sonar array.
The Surveyor is the largest of a group of maritime drones, if they can be called that, put together by a California-based company named Saildrone. Powered by wind, but also a 75 horsepower diesel engine, it can move its 72-foot (22 meters) body over the waves at speeds of up to six knots (seven mph/11 kph).
That's not at all impressive, but the Surveyor doesn't care about that, because speed is not what it's after. Like all other Saildrone products, including the smaller Explorer and Voyager, this one too has been designed to operate for long periods of time on the water, needing no maintenance or refueling.
How long can the Saildrone stay out at sea, you ask? The Surveyor can leave port or a deployment ship and stay on the job for as much as 180 days. Depending on the payload it carries, it can collect data at depths of up to almost 23,000 feet (7,000 meters).
Earlier this month the company that makes the Surveyor announced it integrated, for the first time, the BlueSentry sonar array into the drone. Made by defense contractor Thales Australia, the technology can be used to conduct autonomous maritime threat detection and surveillance.
The BlueSentry-sentry has been out at sea, off the coast of California, for a while now, conducting a series of sea trials that proved the “this system can effectively detect and classify both underwater and surface threats and report this information to decision makers in real time.”
We’re not given the specifics of the test, but the companies involved say the system was operational for a total of 26 days, achieving an uptime greater than 96 percent. During all this time, the drone communicated with its remote operators by means of Starlink and Iridium satellites.
Saildrone says the pairing between its drones, the sonar array, and the comms satellites will enable the Surveyor to look and listen for threats in places that were until now impossible to reach using crewed vessels.
Moreover, the fact that Saildrone can operate under wind power in total silence, thus increasing the detection capabilities of the payload it carries.
Now that this initial test is over, the two companies say they are ready to deploy the technology at scale, helping create a detection mesh against submarines and other threats to help boost national security.
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