MILAN — Saildrone, the US manufacturer of unmanned surface vessels, is expanding its European footprint with plans to produce naval systems in the Netherlands, Norway and Poland, the company announced today.
The announcement comes a day before Scandinavia’s largest defense exhibition — DALO Industry Days — kicks off in Denmark, where the American company also established its EU headquarters earlier this year.
Saildrone, whose vessels have been used by the US military in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific to track alleged drug smugglers, is launching three construction projects designed to strengthen the company’s ability to rapidly build and deploy USVs throughout European waters.
“The first 52-meter Saildrone Spectre will be built at Van Der Valk Shipyard in the Netherlands, and the next generation of the Saildrone Surveyor will be produced at Umoe Mandal in Norway,” Richard Jenkins, Saildrone’s founder and CEO, said in a press release.
The final contract announced is in partnership with New Zealand-headquartered supplier Southern Spars, which will produce the “wings” of the Surveyor USVs in Poland, meaning the tall and rigid vertical structure that acts as a sail providing wind-powered propulsion to the systems.
The company offers four classes of USVs, including the 20-meter Surveyor and its largest and fastest platform to date, the 52-meter Spectre. The Spectre, which weighs 250 tons, was unveiled in April and will be built in partnership with Lockheed Martin and Fincantieri Marine Group. It is intended to fill a critical anti-submarine warfare capability gap and deliver high-speed — up to 30 knots — and kinetic strikes. Possible payloads it will be able to carry include two of Lockheed Martin’s MK-70 Payload Delivery System.
In the summer of 2026, the Danish Armed Forces launched a multi-month operational trial using four Saildrone Voyager USVs across the country’s territorial waters to bolster maritime surveillance and intelligence-gathering in Northern Europe.
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According to Saildrone, these USVs completed a six-month deployment with “92 [percent] fleet uptime in harsh weather and sea states” while detecting over “170,000 unique contacts,” referring to individual objects or vessels.
A company spokesperson told Breaking Defense that while Saildrone is not able to comment on any forthcoming contracts in Europe, they are “building to meet demand.” In the company’s press release, it referred to the announced European projects as three separate build contracts with the respective countries.
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