Pentagon considers expanding Rio Grande drone fleet

The Pentagon is considering adding up to 50 Lightfish boats to a 10-vessel pilot fleet that began in January after the vessels helped detect and deter suspected border crossings and drug trafficking. Built by San Diego startup Seasats, each craft is 11 feet long, weighs 340 pounds, costs roughly $240,000, runs on solar panels, launches from a boat ramp or pickup truck bed, and can operate for months in rough seas. The boats carry electro-optical, infrared and sonar sensors that feed data into Palantir's Maven Smart System and Anduril's Fortress platform, alerting Customs and Border Protection and Coast Guard units. M. Roosevelt Ditlevson said maritime drones are cost-effective solutions to interdict areas narco traffickers are now moving towards, and that people see the vessel waiting and know they have basically been found out. He described incremental expansion in a Reuters interview and said the Pentagon is agnostic to the vendor and wants the best technology. Mike Flanigan said a plane or ship cannot keep station over a patch of ocean for a day while the boat can stay for months, the key differentiator for monitoring. A commercial Lightfish navigated close to a Chinese destroyer in the Philippines' EEZ and captured video. No final decision on the expansion has been announced.