Twelve hulls.
One operator.
NOLA is a field-engineered approach to naval autonomous warfare: start from the supply chain that already exists, and rapidly repurpose it into capability the warfighter can afford, learn, fix, and modify forward.
Prepared in response to the U.S. military joint funding initiative for innovation in naval autonomous systems.
We build from the field, not toward it
The laboratory path
Define a mission → engineer a bespoke prototype → qualify exotic components → train specialists → deliver years later, at a unit cost that makes every loss a program event.
The NOLA path
Open the catalog of what industry already ships → repurpose it into warfighter equipment → put it on the water fast → let field feedback, not lab schedules, drive the next revision.
It is the field engineer’s perspective instead of the laboratory’s: the discipline of making capable systems out of what can actually be obtained, in quantity, right now. When a part is commercial, every distributor and machine shop becomes part of the logistics tail — and every sailor who can turn a wrench becomes part of the maintenance plan.
Aerial drones proved the curve. We bring it to the water.
Small aerial drones rewrote the economics of air power not through exotic engineering but through commodity supply chains. The same levers are available in the naval domain, and they are the levers NOLA is built around:
Material cost
Commodity hulls, motors, and compute — attritable by design, procured in dozens, not ones.
Warfighter training
If operating it takes months of schooling, we engineered it wrong. Familiar controls, hours to competence.
Supply chain flexibility
Multi-source commercial components. When one vendor dries up, the design absorbs a substitute.
Field maintenance & modification
Repairable pier-side with common tools — and modifiable there too, because the field knows first what the mission needs.
Prototype 01 — the twelve-vessel swarm
Our first prototype is a swarm of twelve autonomous surface vessels operated by a single person through one joystick. The operator commands the swarm — its formation, posture, and intent — while onboard autonomy handles station-keeping, collision avoidance, and coordination between hulls. One warfighter’s attention, multiplied twelve times across the water.
Prototype 01 is being built with partners — component suppliers, integrators, and domain experts — who collaborate through this site. If you are one of them, you will receive an invitation; this public page is intentionally the only part visible without one.