Blue Water Autonomy has announced partnerships with Tulip, Caterpillar, Precise Power Systems, and Valstad to scale the production of its autonomous vessels.
The initiative aims to combine industrial capacity with Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled manufacturing to support the United States Navy Medium Unmanned Surface Vessels (MUSV) programme.
The Boston-based company is currently building its Liberty Class, a 58-metre autonomous ship, at Conrad Shipyard in Louisiana. This development comes as the U.S. Navy accelerates its unmanned initiatives, with more than US$6 billion in funding allocated for the MUSV programme, the fleet’s largest unmanned project.
“Traditional shipbuilding doesn’t scale, and pure software approaches don’t deliver hardware. We’re doing both – integrating proven marine systems with AI-driven manufacturing and operations to fundamentally rethink how ships are built,” said Rylan Hamilton, Chief Executive Officer of Blue Water Autonomy.
“By distributing and parallelising work across proven partners, we’re creating a production system that can move at the pace required for a modern maritime industrial base.”
The manufacturing model utilises a network of partners to digitise shipbuilding processes. Tulip provides an AI-native manufacturing execution system to coordinate production activities on the factory floor, while Caterpillar Defense supplies the marine diesel engines for the vessels.
Precise Power Systems is responsible for integrated containerised engine modules designed for extended autonomous operation without human intervention.
“Shipbuilding has always required extraordinary coordination, and we’re giving that coordination a software backbone,” said Erik Mirandette, Chief Business Officer at Tulip.
“Tulip connects every step on the factory floor with real-time data and AI-native tools, so Blue Water can orchestrate production at scale, catch issues earlier, and build with the speed and reliability that modern maritime demands.”
Valstad is developing manufacturing automation capabilities for the project, including robotic fabrication cells and modular structural panel kits. These systems are intended deliver a scalable, software-defined production system to improve speed and resilience.
Shipbuilding and testing of the vessels are currently underway, with a live autonomy demonstration targeted for later in 2026.
