Robots at Sea

Coming soon to a waterway near you: drones that patrol the water for drug smugglers, terrorists, or anything else that's in the water and shouldn't be.

The market for seafaring drones, so called unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), hasn't quite blossomed yet, but it is emerging. Defense companies are already rolling out concept vehicles, and in some cases, pushing ahead with design work. Defense giant Lockheed Martin unveiled its latest concept -- dubbed Cobra -- yesterday (apparently so conceptual that they don't even have concept pictures yet). As our friends at Defense Daily report:

Lockheed Martin [LMT] is developing an 11-meter unmanned surface vehicle (USV) dubbed COBRA that could be used for both blue water and littoral solutions, a Lockheed Martin official said.

COBRA, Common Off Board Reconfigurable Asset, is a Lockheed Martin effort to develop an unmanned surface vehicle with an advanced composite hull design that can accommodate various sea states (up to sea state four), a reconfigurable propulsion system and modular payload capability, Alex Boon, technical lead on multi mission USVs, told reporters during a briefing in Arlington, Va., yesterday.

There's an excellent article in a recent issue of Defense Technology International on the Israeli market for USVs, where Protector (pictured above) is facing off against the Silver Marlin. Israel's been in this market a while, and companies there are looking to export their USVs abroad.

Lockheed is already teamed with Rafael, the maker of the Protector USV, so it'll be interesting to see where they go with the Cobra.