The Latest Sign Killer Robots Are Destined To Rule The Waves

NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland — U.S. defense contractors are unveiling new technologies that will bring America up to speed on a naval battlefield that has become dominated by drones and autonomous ships.

Multiple companies displayed their unmanned surface vessels (USVs) at the Sea Air Space 2026 expo. The companies also stated that these systems could operate without human interaction if electronic warfare jammed communications with the systems, raising ethical concerns.

Current U.S. law does not prohibit lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS).

One notable USV on display at the Sea Air Space 2026 expo was the Venom, manufactured by Scientific Systems. The vessel is unmanned, more than 30 feet long and has a 300-horsepower diesel engine. Scientific Systems representatives said that the boat could be outfitted for offense, defense, resupply and reconnaissance missions.

“You could send out 1,000 of these and give each one a 1-square-mile block to patrol, or something like that,” Andrew Loiselle, a strategic advisor to Scientific Systems and retired rear admiral, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“It was envisioned as a one-way attack vehicle, and so that’s what we developed,” Loiselle told DCNF. The boat can be fitted with a “kinetic [explosive] payload in the bow . . . you could missionize it in any number of ways.”

This means the Venom USV could be used to ram surface vessels while carrying an explosive payload in the front for suicide missions.

BlackSea Technologies’ Chaser USVs with a 30mm autocannon and dummy missiles docked at the Air Space Sea 2026 expo. (Francis Kapper / Daily Caller News Foundation)

‘Everybody’s Jamming Everything’

USVs, which are low-cost, low-risk and high-reward when compared with traditional naval attacks, have made repeated appearances in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict and the Strait of Hormuz.

The MKD VYOM, an oil tanker, was struck by a USV in the Gulf of Oman, according to information from the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center.

“Ukraine embarked on a series of bold attacks [using USVs],” according to a report from the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense. “These included… a number of uncrewed surface vessel attacks against Russian ships at sea.”

Historically, this is not the first time that suicide boats have been used in combat. In World War 2, the Imperial Japanese Navy utilized the Shinyo suicide motorboat to target enemy ships.

Loiselle described one application of the vessel as a defensive tool. The U.S. Navy could set up a “geographic fence” in a designated area and assign a mission to attack anything that enters a certain region.

“If anything comes in there, hit it,” Loiselle said.

The big deal here isn’t the hardware; the real innovation is AI-powered software that allows one operator to easily manage multiple units at once, Scientific Systems told the DCNF.

Operators of these systems now have to consider that communications, GPS signals and radio frequencies have been jammed in recent conflicts like the naval blockade against the Iranian regime in the Strait of Hormuz.

“As we’re seeing in Ukraine and Iran, everybody’s jamming everything,” Loiselle told the DCNF. “So if you’ve developed a product that doesn’t operate without communications, you’re shooting behind the dock.”

The Department of War has acknowledged that “the rapid development and proliferation of unmanned systems is changing the character of conflict,” and says it is reorganizing its response around a department-wide strategy to counter unmanned threats. The U.S. Navy has plans to deploy thousands of USVs to the Indo-Pacific theater, USNI reported.

Armed forces that intend to use this USV, or any other autonomous weapon system, in contested or international waters must consider the possibility that civilian, noncombatant or even hospital ships may enter the designated area in which unmanned surface vessels are operating.

The Venom has passed inspections and certifications and is ready for purchase; however, no units have been purchased by the U.S. Navy yet.

Not all of the autonomous systems on display at the expo had offensive capabilities. Skyways, a drone manufacturer, displayed its vertical takeoff and landing V3 drone.

“Our stance is, there’s plenty of other [drone manufacturers] that are going to do munitions and are going to be weaponized. We’re not,” Skyways chief marketing officer Jessica Hogan told DCNF. “We are here to increase the airlift capacity for the US military.”

“It can go up to 1200 miles and fly up to 100 pounds of cargo,” Hogan told DCNF. “We can do any kind of configuration, modular payload, so we can move equipment.”

Hogan said Skyways has been flying with the Department of War since 2019. Its operations include cargo deliveries, both ship-to-shore and ship-to-ship.

The Venom was not the only USV on display at Sea Air Space 2026. BlackSea Technologies attended the event and displayed its Chaser USV.

The Chaser USV is significantly smaller than the Venom, at just over 16 feet long. Chaser USVs at the expo displayed mock weapon systems, like a 30 millimeter autocannon and a launcher for Hellfire missiles.

Brian Fitzpatrick, the president of maritime systems at BlackSea Technologies, told the DCNF that the 300 units of the Chaser USV predecessor, the GARC, have already been delivered to the U.S. Navy.

“Depending on if you lose comms or have communications with the vessel or not, it can continue to its mission depending on what the mission is, or you can recall it and tell it to go do something else,” Fitzpatrick told the DCNF.

That means that if a Chaser USV loses contact with the operator, it can operate autonomously to complete its mission, which may include offensive actions. The Chaser USV has been tested with “about 15 different payloads,” Fitzpatrick said.

“So, but yeah, we’re not building killer robots,” Fitzpatrick told DCNF. “Right?”