Could Ukraine's Drone Boats Fight for America Too?
Red Cat, a prominent American drone builder, wants to begin making battle-proven Ukrainian drone boat designs for U.S. military customers. Unmanned systems are a top acquisition priority for the Navy and for the Pentagon as a whole, and Red Cat's newly-formed Blue Ops division hopes to meet that need at scale, with short lead times and mature solutions. To learn more, TME spoke with Blue Ops' new CEO, Barry Hinckley, a longtime tech executive and a member of the Hinckley boatbuilding family.
I'm launching Blue Ops for Red Cat, which sort of brings together my entire career and life. I grew up in a third-generation boat building family up in Maine. The industry was devastated in the 1980s-90s, first by the offshoring of American jobs - competing with workforces around the world that weren't subject to American labor laws, EPA regulations, or American standard of living. That was a devastating wave to American shipbuilding.
I never thought I'd see the day when manufacturing was getting revived, and certainly not with boats. I am overjoyed that I can be a part of rebuilding marine manufacturing in America. It's amazing. Reopening a factory in Valdosta, Georgia that has been shuttered and employing hundreds of people down there in the coming months and years to build American boats is so exciting. I also have a strong technical background and boatbuilding background, so this merges both of them and it's quite fulfilling for me.
Can you tell us a bit about Blue Ops' initial product? I understand it's combat proven in the Black Sea, and I'm interested in learning about its capabilities.
We started with a seven-meter boat because it is the most versatile of our proposed fleet. It has five different configurations. It can carry machine guns, anti-aircraft missiles, and there are two different versions that launch UAVs — which is great for us because our goal is to be an all-domain defense company, and we are already strong in UAVs. One version launches a single, large UAV and another has two compartments that launch eight UAVs combined. Then there is the kinetic version, which carries 1,400 pounds of C4 explosive material. So that would be more than what they call, in the vernacular, "kamikaze."
It's proven, and it's a deep-V hull. For a boat that size, it has a fair amount of self-righting capability. The nice thing about not carrying humans is you can lower the center of gravity. You don't need any creature comforts, so the boats can right themselves. That means they can handle higher sea states. Certainly with payload in the right places and fuel in the right places, you can create a very stable platform that can handle the higher sea states.
The great thing about that boat is, if you think about the five different configurations, you can launch 40 of these, all configured differently at a target with long range. The boat carries 1,200 liters of fuel, so you've got hundreds of miles of range. And if it's a one-way trip, you can be pretty lethal at a long distance. That's why we're starting with the seven-meter. It's a very capable and very proven system over the past three years in the Ukraine conflict.
Do you see an application for this kind of small vessel in some of the U.S. Navy's top priority regions?
Yes, of course. We're probably getting into version three of these boats now. Over the past three years, the iteration has been very rapid at the speed of conflict, which is why we think we have an advantage. They stared with a singular or a couple of boats remotely driven by humans to engage the target, and now they're getting pretty good at the swarming tactics and swarming boats. I would imagine that they're going to fit in very well with the "hellscape scenario" that we've all read about in the Taiwan Strait, for example, because these boats are very mature in their development.
The second part of that is we can iterate very quickly. If you think of this as kind of a two-part play, payload aside, the Navy — whatever branch of military desires — the boats and their payloads are going to vary depending on their mission, right? But if you take the boat, for example, we can iterate very quickly. The boat is simply the platform. Sure, there's some science and technology in building a great boat, but we can do that. We've done that, so then you layer on the technology to get to the mission.
If the demands are for a slightly different hull shape or a different sea state, we can turn a new boat design around and have the first hull out the door in about three months. Then it's just about adjusting the tech stack to that new boat, which is really tweaking. If you're talking about building a boat that's maybe eight and a half meters, has to be a little wider, maybe a W hull versus a V hull configuration to handle sea state five, and it has to be self-righting because it's going to be getting pounded in the Pacific — we envision a future where we'll be tweaking hull shapes depending on the theater, but we can do that quickly. Between my family and our partners in the Hodgdon family, we've got eight generations of boat building experience. We know we can build an awesome boat that is really rugged and will do the job.
Will these be remote-controlled or autonomous?
We're working with autonomy partners. We take a baseline boat, baseline mature remote control system, good comms, and then we build on top of it with American technology, in collaboration with U.S. governmental agencies, whether it be Navy, Coast Guard, or Customs and Border Patrol, depending on what their demands are. We work with them to produce the final product.
We have the platform. We build it. It's solid, it's sound. We've got a great remote control system that's stable and mature in its fourth year of iteration. Then you add on the technology — the autonomy that relates to not only navigation and communications, but payload delivery. It's early days, but there are American companies that are building payload autonomy, and that's the future. This is why I'm pretty confident America can win this one, because we are still the technology leaders in the world, and we certainly—hopefully—remain so.
Are you looking at a rapid acquisition contract for a government customer in the near future?
We have our own production. We have a 155,000 square foot factory that we're reopening in Valdosta, Georgia, which is great for the community. They've got the capacity there, and they've got the workforce there that's ready to roll. We've got our own capacity on one shift for 600 hulls a year, and we'd like to get to 1,200 hulls, and we can do that with the capacity we have.
America is behind in its production capability, and we need the wheels turning up production as soon as possible. If, heaven forbid, a conflict does happen and they need thousands of boats a year rather than a few hundred, we can ramp production up because the machine is already running. We'll have boats in the water this fall and we're already building, so we'd love to start putting them to work.
It seems like the Navy and also the Pentagon as a whole are very interested in moving fast with this. Do you see it speeding up?
I've heard stories about the older requisition process taking years, and it's hard to keep a factory moving if you're waiting for an order for years. So we're hopeful that this realignment, combined with Secretary Hegseth's order in August to focus on the rapid acquisition of more drones, will lead to more orders sooner so we can start. The reality is, we need to start making these USVs now. We are behind as a country. The threats are real, and the ocean is three-quarters of the world's surface. We need to be there, and we need to be in a lot of places that would be uncomfortable, impossible or impractical to put a human for any long period of time. Well, we can send these boats out for days.
Compared to, say, dispatching an anti-ship cruise missile, is this seven-meter drone going to be a cheaper weapons system?
Yes, a lot cheaper. It's a competitive market right now. We're not the only people in this game, and we're all keeping each other pretty honest when it comes to pricing. The U.S. government is going to get a huge bang for their buck with these boats. - TME