Blue Ops, the maritime division of drone and robotic solutions provider Red Cat Holdings, has entered into a strategic partnership with collaborative autonomy leader Havoc to integrate advanced command-and-control software into its uncrewed surface vessels.
The collaboration aims to deploy Havoc’s collaborative autonomy technology across multiple Blue Ops uncrewed surface vessels, beginning with the Variant 7 platform and extending to future platforms. By combining software and hardware capabilities, the companies seek to enable coordinated multi-vessel operations and offer an expanded range of autonomous functionality to U.S. and allied defense customers. The initiative builds upon Blue Ops’ Modular Open Systems Architecture approach, which is designed to rapidly incorporate autonomy, sensors, communications, and payloads based on evolving operational requirements. Havoc’s collaborative autonomy software has previously been deployed on behalf of the U.S. Department of War across multiple operational settings.
“This partnership is exactly what our open-architecture strategy was built for,” said Barry Hinckley, President of Blue Ops. “Our goal is to build the best small USVs in the world while making it easy to integrate leading technologies from across the U.S. and our allies. Havoc has developed a powerful collaborative autonomy solution and integrating it with Blue Ops platforms gives customers greater choice and flexibility while accelerating how quickly advanced autonomous maritime capabilities can be fielded.”
To support testing, demonstration, and customer evaluation, Blue Ops and Havoc are establishing operational fleets at Havoc’s headquarters in Rhode Island and Blue Ops’ headquarters in Florida. These dual locations will provide defense customers and partners with access to integrated systems for live demonstrations, testing, training, and operational evaluations covering both single-vessel autonomy and multi-vessel operations.
“Havoc’s primary strategy is to pair our leading-edge collaborative autonomy software with platform manufacturers who have already proven innovation, excellence, and scale,” said Paul Lwin, CEO and Co-Founder of Havoc. “Blue Ops is the perfect partner to continue our journey because they are building an open, flexible family of maritime systems that align directly with how we believe autonomy should be deployed. By integrating Havoc across the Blue Ops portfolio, we can give operators the ability to command and coordinate multiple autonomous vessels while preserving the flexibility to adapt as operational requirements evolve.”
Beyond software integration and operational testing, both organizations plan to work together to expand market reach for their respective technologies. Red Cat and Blue Ops intend to introduce Havoc’s autonomy and command-and-control software to their government and commercial client base, while Havoc plans to market Blue Ops’ fleet of vessels to its existing network as both entities jointly pursue opportunities requiring integrated autonomous maritime systems.
