A 33-foot version called Voyager adds a diesel-electric engine to power additional sensors including radar. Its endurance is reduced to 180 days but the diesel aid to propulsion yields 4-5 knot cruise speeds. The largest 72-foot Surveyor has more diesel capacity, a larger sail for 5 to 10 knot speeds, 180 days endurance and further sensors potentially including towed acoustic sensor arrays of the kind the Navy uses for mine and submarine detection.
“We saw that Saildrone with their persistent presence – they could stay at sea up to a year – would be great for maintaining an MDA presence in remote regions, places we cannot get too easily.” The Hawaii MDA evaluation joins informal discussions which Saildrone is having with the Navy and reinforced the need to add diesel power to get closer to targets for imagery purposes and the addition of radar for more info, resulting in the Voyager variant. It also bolstered Jenkins ambition to add acoustic sensors to take advantage of the essentially silent operation of the sail-powered USVs.
“With the advent of hypersonic weapons anything large [like a ship] will be taken out very quickly. The new area [of tactical interest] is distributed ISR. We’re not trying to replace ships and people but let’s do the job that ships and people don’t like doing, persistent operations in remote and dangerous places.”
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