Last Week, I wrote about Lockheed Martin and The Prime Contractor Incentive Problem.

This week, I’m releasing an updated analysis of Saronic Technologies, a company we first covered in Issue #7.

Today also marks one year since the first issue of Defense Tech Signals.

Over that year, the newsletter has grown from 10 subscribers for the first email to 682 today. The audience now includes operators, founders, investors, and policymakers engaging seriously with defense innovation.

This coming year, my engagement with private capital and industry is set to become more official as well. More to follow…

Saronic is a vertically integrated maritime autonomy company building a family of autonomous surface vessels (ASVs) and the software stack to operate them, targeting “attritable” scale manufacturing for U.S. and allied naval users.

Their mission is to help the U.S. Navy quickly field distributed maritime capabilities to remain credible as China expands its naval reach.

Saronic was founded in September 2022 by Dino Mavrookas (CEO), a former Navy SEAL; Rob Lehman (Chief Commercial Officer), a retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel; Vibhav “Vib” Altekar (CTO), an early engineer at Anduril; and Doug Lambert (COO), former Head of Engineering at Liquid Robotics.

Within 90 days of founding, Saronic secured two R&D agreements with the U.S. Navy. That early traction led to strong investor support, rapid team expansion, and the rollout of a new class of ocean drones in under two years. They also acquired a 420,000 sq. ft. facility in Austin to scale production.

Saronic’s vision has evolved to not only redefine maritime superiority but also play a key role in revitalizing American shipbuilding and supporting the Navy’s transition to a hybrid fleet in the 21st-century maritime environment.

 24-foot modular platform capable of high-speed blue-water operations.

The Marauder represents Saronic’s entry into large-class uncrewed ships.

A compact 6-foot ASV for contested littoral zones. Supports single-ship ops or collaborative swarms and can launch from expeditionary craft.

A 14-foot ASV designed for missions requiring more endurance and payload. It can deploy loitering munitions, extend command-and-control networks, and track enemy vessels at range.

Saronic’s Port Alpha, announced in February 2025, will provide a dedicated facility to scale the production of autonomous surface vessels and bypass legacy shipbuilding bottlenecks. The initiative will play a crucial role in supporting the Navy’s transition to a hybrid fleet.

China now commands the world’s largest maritime force, with over 370 battle force platforms compared to the U.S. Navy’s 296. That number excludes the hundreds of Maritime Militia vessels that extend Beijing’s presence in the gray zone.

By 2030, China’s fleet is projected to grow to 435 ships, while U.S. projections remain flat. Some argue the U.S. should simply build more ships. China operates more than 20 naval shipyards and dozens of commercial yards capable of dual-use conversion.

The United States relies on seven major private yards and four public shipyards, many optimized for maintenance rather than expansion, and struggling with workforce and infrastructure constraints. So any attempt to surge production would likely be matched or exceeded by Beijing.

The fallback argument has long been quality over quantity. However, according to the Office of Naval Intelligence, “Chinese naval ship design and material quality is in many cases comparable to USN ships, and China is quickly closing remaining deficiencies.²

If the U.S. can't win on numbers and can't rely on a permanent quality edge, it needs a different theory of competition entirely.

Deployed at scale, Saronic’s platforms could operate as a kind of autonomous wolfpack, disrupting China’s “squatter’s rights” tactics in the South China Sea, extending U.S. presence, and providing persistent ISR without crew burden or capital ship costs.

Combined with exquisite capital ships and next-generation major combatants, this creates something of a barbell strategy: High-end, survivable platforms at the top and Large volumes of autonomous, scalable systems at the bottom

And Chief of Naval Operations is pushing this strategy forward. Admiral Caudle’s recently released “Hedge” strategy specifically cites “Autonomous systems for sea denial and global seabed control” while still maintaining a solid Main Battle Force.

Saronic is well-positioned to support the U.S. Navy’s push to modernize its fleet, which includes expanding to a 500-ship force with 150 uncrewed vessels. Much like Ukraine’s success in the Black Sea, where uncrewed platforms have proven to be game-changers, if Saronic could become a core element of U.S. naval strategy.