Milan: Saildrone, a US manufacturer of unmanned surface vessels, has integrated new protective equipment onto its drone boats operating in the Middle East to safeguard them against widespread jamming of communication systems in the region.
The company said it had successfully deployed its Saildrone Voyager, a 33-foot USV, in Jordan, with new hardware and software algorithms, allowing it to operate in GPS-denied environments.
“Due to regional events, GPS jamming and spoofing have hindered unmanned operating systems in the area – following intensive testing by our engineers to create a resilient positioning system, Saildrone now has the ability to autonomously operate in spoofed maritime environments,” a company statement reads.
The US Navy’s Task Force 59 has used Saildrone USVs for several years as part of experiments with unmanned systems and artificial intelligence carried out across the US Fifth Fleet area of operations, which include the Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea. Key challenges identified in these waters include piracy as well as smuggling of weapons and drugs.
A more recent threat to regional maritime security has been GPS interference, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO), which tracks intrusion reports in these areas. The agency has received further corroborating reports from vessels experiencing jamming in the Strait of Hormuz, with disruptions lasting several hours, affecting navigation systems and requiring vessels to rely on backup methods, it said in a March 10 statement.
The upgrades made to the Saildrone USV exploit different forms of localisation to allow the systems to operate without relying exclusively on satellite signals. The boat carried out missions in contested environments during the International Maritime Exercise (IMX) 2025, the largest maritime exercise in the Middle East, last month.
“Satellite positioning and connectivity can no longer be relied upon in potential future conflicts,” Richard Jenkins, founder and chief executive officer at Saildrone, said in a statement.
In recent years, there has been increased pressure for US forces to train without relying on GSP for positioning, navigation and timing information (PNT). In a 2022 article for the US Naval Institute, US Navy Lt. Anthony Carrillo noted that a major vulnerability of the country’s naval weapons is that nearly all of them rely on GPS.
