Navy Pays About $1.2 Billion for 30 Drone Warships, Pricing Autonomy at $40 Million a Hull

The U.S. Navy has set a sticker price for a robotic warship: about $40 million a hull ¹. On Tuesday it ordered 30 medium unmanned surface vessels↗ from Saronic, HII and Galliano Marine Service, ten hulls each, for yards in Loreauville, Houma and Franklin, Louisiana, with deliveries from as early as the fourth quarter of fiscal 2027 ¹. At that average the buy comes to about $1.2 billion, an estimate at 30 hulls rather than a disclosed total, and the service did not say what each company received ¹.

The boats run on reconciliation money; the wingmen wait in a queue

Every dollar flows from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the reconciliation legislation Congress passed last year, which carries $2.1 billion for medium unmanned surface vessels; this one award takes more than half the pot ¹². Annual appropriations are the slower queue: the House has passed a stopgap through 11 December↗ that now awaits the president's signature ³.

The contrast with the Navy's flying autonomy is stark. Its carrier-based drone wingman is still a request for information↗, with a $30 million affordability goal and two prototypes wanted within three years ⁴. The boats reached production first because their money never touched that cycle.

One input in 26 hours cleared the bar

Saronic's winning Marauder is 180 feet long, carries up to 150 metric tons of modular payload and lists a range of 5,400 nautical miles ⁵. It cleared more than 140 scenarios in eight days of round-the-clock trials against a Navy bar of 26 hours and 360 nautical miles on a single input from a control station ⁵¹. The smaller Corsair already struck Iranian naval targets at Bandar Abbas, the first combat use of American sea drones, a debut The Inference covered alongside Saronic's shipyard pitch ⁵.

Ten hulls nearly match Saronic's whole order book

Saronic was last valued at $9.25 billion, after a $1.75 billion raise led by Kleiner Perkins in March↗, and holds about $500 million in government contracts ⁶⁷. Ten hulls at the Navy's average is roughly $400 million, nearly the entire existing book landing in one order ¹.

Its Port Alpha yard in Brownsville, Texas, a project above $3 billion, breaks ground Wednesday with the LCU-1700 landing craft effort, about $280.5 million in initial obligations across three builders, as day-one backlog ⁸⁵. HII, the only listed company among the winners, adds a priced unmanned line alongside its Romulus vessels ¹.

All six companies that passed the trials, winners included, collect $15 million and a seat in the Defense Department's drone marketplace; the three other passers were Leidos, PacMar Technologies and Sea Machines ¹. Birdon, the lone failure, gets a stated path into Phase Two ¹. At $40 million a hull, the Navy has handed private markets the number drone-boat valuations will be measured against, or marked down by.

A court ruling, a 16 November gate and one valuation to defend

Blue Water Autonomy and Saildrone are suing in the Court of Federal Claims↗, arguing the Navy ignored its own selection criteria, and Blue Water has asked the court to halt the program's testing and funding ². Phase Two evaluations open as early as 16 November, assessed on a rolling basis over five years ¹. Watch whether Saronic's $9.25 billion mark survives contact with a price list.