{"id":21786,"date":"2026-08-18T19:05:23","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T19:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/21786\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T19:05:23","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T19:05:23","slug":"saildrone-announces-european-expansion-for-drone-boats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/21786\/","title":{"rendered":"Saildrone announces European expansion for drone boats"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saildrone, the U.S. manufacturer of autonomous surface vessels, or drone boats<\/a>, announced on Tuesday its plans to expand its production with new facilities in Norway<\/a>, Poland<\/a>, and the Netherlands<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The company said that the first European-built 170-foot Saildrone Spectre will be built at the Van Der Valk Shipyard in the Netherlands, the next-generation 65-foot Saildrone Surveyor will be manufactured at Umoe Mandal in Norway, and Southern Spars will produce Surveyor wings in Poland.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s European Union headquarters officially opened in Copenhagen, Denmark, as part of the announcement. There will also be technical teams based at the headquarters ready to deploy, operate, and maintain the fleet in the region.<\/p>\n

\u201cSaildrone USVs have helped governments around the world to improve maritime domain awareness, counter drug trafficking, migrant crossings, and illegal fishing, and protect critical marine infrastructure. We are pleased to bring that proven capability to our European partners facing many of the same challenges,\u201d said Robert Kleist, managing director of Saildrone Europe. \u201cBringing Saildrone manufacturing and operations to Europe creates an enduring sovereign capability for our European customers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Monday at its new office, located at the historic Qunitus Bastion in Holmen, Copenhagen.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is fantastic to see Saildrone\u2019s European headquarters located here in this historic naval site in Central Copenhagen,\u201d said Defense Industry Attache, His Royal Highness Brigadier General Prince Joachim at the ceremony. \u201cSaildrone brings some of the latest maritime sensing technology to Denmark, which will certainly help protect our shared European waters against the many real threats we face today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saildrone got a $60 million investment led by the Export and Investment Fund of Denmark last year to begin the country\u2019s partnership. The Danish Ministry of Defense Acquisition and Logistics Organization completed a six-month deployment of four Saildrone Voyager drone boats, which had a \u201c92% fleet uptime in harsh weather and sea states while detecting more than 170,000 unique contacts,\u201d a press release said.<\/p>\n

The company produces four different-sized drone boats: the 23-foot Explorer, the 33-foot Voyager, the Surveyor, and the Spectre. The various vessels can be used for counter-drug, illegal fishing, border monitoring, coastal mapping missions, and more.<\/p>\n

Last year, Saildrone had four Voyager USVs participate in NATO\u2019s Task Force X in the Gulf of Finland and the western Baltic Sea. During the exercise, the drone boats made real-world detections of non-cooperative vessels, including ones linked to Russia\u2019s \u201cshadow fleet,\u201d demonstrating their domain awareness in detecting and tracking maritime movements. These drone boats could contribute to NATO<\/a> countries\u2019 defenses<\/a> against Russian gray-zone tactics, which are low-level operations from Russia that do not amount to declarations of war but more often focus on sabotage, jamming communications systems, cyberattacks, and more.<\/p>\n

The U.S. military<\/a> currently uses Saildrone drone boats in the counter-drug mission focused on the Caribbean and eastern Pacific Ocean. Saildrone announced in February 2025, weeks after President Donald Trump\u2019s<\/a> inauguration, that it would provide 20 Voyager USVs to support Joint Interagency Task Force South and U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command\/U.S. Navy Fourth Fleet.<\/p>\n

Back in October 2025, Lockheed Martin agreed to a $50 million strategic investment in Saildrone to put Lockheed Martin\u2019s tech on Saildrone\u2019s autonomous vessels. They are working together on the Spectre drone boat. It will include the MK 70 Payload Delivery System, which is a containerized launch system that will provide mid-range precision fire capabilities to the drone boats. The two sides have also discussed adding Lockheed\u2019s Joint Air-to-Ground Missile Quad Launcher to the Surveyor drone boat.<\/p>\n

The use of unmanned surface vessels has been a component of the broader military evolution toward autonomy, most prominently demonstrated in the Russia-Ukraine war<\/a>, where both sides have continued to innovate and develop new capabilities.<\/p>\n

A MAINTENANCE MAN\u2019S BEST FRIEND: HOW ROBOTIC \u2018DRONE DOGS\u2019 CAN HELP THE AIR FORCE MAINTAIN ITS FLEET<\/a><\/p>\n

Ukraine has used kamikaze drone boats to target Russian warships in the Black Sea and beyond. Last month, the Ukrainian company that manufactures many of those vessels, UFORCE, agreed to a deal<\/a> with an American boat manufacturing company to build them in its U.S. plants.<\/p>\n

The U.S. military also used the\u00a0Saronic-made Corsair drone boat\u00a0in the Iran<\/a> war. The USV\u00a0rescued two Army Apache helicopter pilots<\/a>\u00a0who had to make an emergency landing in the Arabian Sea in June, and they later used that same platform to hit a submarine and a ship maintenance facility<\/a> at the port at Bandar Abbas Naval Base.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saildrone, the U.S. manufacturer of autonomous surface vessels, or drone boats, announced on Tuesday its plans to expand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[361,452,74,455,4225,1195,610,9],"class_list":["post-21786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-poland","tag-defense","tag-drones","tag-europe","tag-military","tag-national-security","tag-netherlands","tag-norway","tag-poland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}