CORSAIR: The drone boat that rescued a US Apache crew

[00:00:00]And as newsworthy as the downing of an American attack helicopter certainly is, the even bigger story is how those soldiers were rescued. Because as you know, their savior did not come in the form of a rigid hull inflatable boat full of sailors and medics, nor was it a combat search and rescue helicopter.

[00:00:19]Instead, they were met by a small unmanned surface vessel or USV called the Saronic Corsair, which had quietly entered service with the US Navy only about 3 months ago. Now, the Corsair reportedly picked up the two soldiers and then transported them out of the area where they could then be picked up by helicopter. At about 24 ft long, the Corsair is about the size of a large speedboat and it can carry payloads of up to 1,000 lb at ranges of over 1,150 mi and at speeds of up to 35 kn or about 40 mph. The Navy has not disclosed how many of these drones that it's got, but we do know they entered service with the Navy's Task Force 59 and its operational counterpart Task Group 59.1 in March of this year after receiving a $392 million Navy contract for an undisclosed number of drone platforms in August of last year, which was funded under an other transaction agreement.

[00:01:25]And we're going to circle back to that part a bit later. Now, according to Saronic, the Corsair platform has already logged over 100,000 nautical miles. That's over 115,000 standard non-pirate miles in testing so far, which would be nearly enough to circle the globe five times. The platform can operate autonomously as a part of larger collaborative swarms or via remote control with a human in the loop via a two-way data link to make some decisions, like employing munitions when armed.