The U.S. Navy is broadening its reliance on uncrewed surface vessels for the deepest, most demanding survey work. On August 4, 2026, Boston-based Blue Water Autonomy said it had been selected for a multi-year, multiple-award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract with the Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO) - a $40 million ceiling under which the company will compete with other awardees for individual task orders spanning the Indian and Pacific oceans.
Why NAVOCEANO Is Turning to Autonomy
Deep open-ocean survey missions send assets hundreds to thousands of nautical miles offshore for weeks or months. Crewed survey ships can burn through tens of thousands of dollars per day. NAVOCEANO wants uncrewed platforms to shoulder that burden - collecting high-resolution seafloor bathymetry alongside acoustic, environmental and metocean data that shape how the fleet operates far from home port.
"Mapping the open ocean is exactly the kind of long, high-endurance work that autonomous vessels are built for," said Rylan Hamilton, CEO of Blue Water Autonomy. "This selection puts our autonomy to work across the Indian and Pacific oceans, well beyond the range of a crewed survey ship, and it shows the technology we are building serves many different missions."
From Liberty-Class to Payload-Agnostic Missions
Blue Water Autonomy has spent the past year rolling out its Liberty-class long-endurance USV in partnership with Conrad Shipyard, aimed at logistics, ISR and now hydrographic survey. The NAVOCEANO award is a validation of the payload-agnostic approach: the same hull that carries defense sensors can host multi-beam sonar and metocean instrumentation, cutting the per-mile cost of ocean characterization.
Part of a Bigger Uncrewed Surface Vessel Push
The award lands amid a broader Pentagon shift toward MUSV and LUSV programs and a new NAVSEA "marketplace" for medium-sized drone boats. Uncrewed platforms operated by USVDIV-32 recently completed the Navy's first live-fire USV training exercise at BALTOPS 2026, and Saildrone Surveyor has begun contributing operationally to fleet awareness.
Related coverage on The Robotics Media: Blue Water Autonomy's Liberty-class build at Conrad Shipyard · Epirus' $11M Marine Corps microwave order · Pentagon's JIATF-401 counter-UAS marketplace.
Reporting based on coverage from Naval News, PR Newswire and Marine Log.