A pair of American defense startups, both founded just four years ago, are aiming to pull off something no one has done before: fire a hypersonic missile from an unmanned ship at sea.
Saronic, which builds autonomous surface vessels, plans to use its 150-ton Marauder drone ship as the launch platform. The weapon that would ride aboard it is the Blackbeard, a hypersonic missile developed by Castelion. According to defence-ua.com, the two companies are targeting a first-ever sea-launched hypersonic demonstration by 2027.
The scale of the ambition is matched by the order book. The Blackbeard has already been ordered in a batch of 12,000 units over five years — an unusually large commitment for a weapon still in development from a company that hasn't yet been in business for half a decade.
Hypersonic missiles travel at speeds above Mach 5, making them extremely difficult to intercept with current defense systems. Launching them from autonomous, crewless ships would add another layer of strategic flexibility: drone vessels can be positioned closer to adversaries without risking sailors' lives, and a fleet of them could theoretically be dispersed across wide ocean areas, making them harder to neutralize preemptively.
The U.S. military has watched China and Russia race ahead in hypersonic development, and private-sector speed is increasingly seen as a way to close that gap faster than traditional defense procurement allows.
If Saronic and Castelion hit their 2027 target, it would mark the first time a hypersonic weapon has ever been demonstrated from a sea-based autonomous platform — a milestone that could reshape how navies think about long-range strike capability.