A ship like none that the U.S. Navy has ever launched is now sailing the waters off the coast of Washington state.
The unmanned surface vessel USX-1 Defiant is now in its testing phase after being completed last month, according to a news release from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
DARPA said the Defiant is part of its No Manning Required Ship program.
Spotted the experimental, newly launched, unmanned US Navy vessel Defiant USX-1 at South Whidbey Harbor in Langley, WA today! 👀 pic.twitter.com/Ft56Nvh0XU
— Andrew Greeness (@andrewrpg) March 6, 2025
Defiant is 180 feet long and weighs 240 metric tons.
DARPA said the vessel “will undergo extensive in-water testing, both dockside and at sea. She is scheduled to depart for a multi-month at sea demonstration in spring 2025.”
“The NOMARS program aims to challenge the traditional naval architecture model, designing a seaframe (the ship without mission systems) from the ground up with no provision, allowance, or expectation for humans on board,” DARPA said in its release.
USX-1 Defiant has officially launched! The No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) program has built a vessel designed to operate autonomously for long durations at sea. #USV For more info and images: https://t.co/n2pIDZyata pic.twitter.com/Dijsxy0EIO
— DARPA (@DARPA) March 4, 2025
“By removing the human element from all ship design considerations, the program intends to demonstrate significant advantages, to include: size, cost, at-sea reliability, greater hydrodynamic efficiency, survivability to sea-state, and survivability to adversary actions through stealth considerations and tampering resistance,” the release said.
“With scaled production, NOMARS has the potential to efficiently and cost-effectively deliver a distributed USV fleet,” DARPA said.
USX-1 Defiant. Unmanned Surface Ship.https://t.co/RdG8m3BXrp pic.twitter.com/xcTtwnN5s8
— Hike Moncho (@eatmonranch) March 5, 2025
Serco Inc., the primary contractor for the project, has been working on the Defiant since 2020, according to The War Zone.
The ship without any mission systems cost about $25 million, the company has said.
📸 DARPA has revealed the No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS)
The NOMARS program has built a ship designed to operate autonomously for long durations at sea. Construction of the prototype unmanned surface vessel (USV), USX-1 Defiant, was completed in February 2025.
Defiant is a… pic.twitter.com/ZnzvGVQ0ND
— Kagan.Dunlap (@Kagan_M_Dunlap) March 4, 2025
The War Zone said the ship has “large open spaces on top of its deck in front of and behind its main mast for add-on payloads.”
Various models show ships like the Defiant able to carry cargo or weapons.
The War Zone said that with one ship completed, Serco is hoping to move up to armed uncrewed ships while others would be floating logistics platforms.
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