Inside a hangar in an industrial area close to a highway and port, elegant fiberglass hulls shaped like oversized canoes, painted naval gray, await the installation of engines and other high-tech systems.
Sailing out of Ukraine, similar unmanned attack craft — mostly built by Ukrainian special forces and security services specifically for this purpose — have been largely responsible for driving the Russian Black Sea fleet out of nearby waters.
If war spreads in the Middle East from the current confrontation between Israel and the US on the one hand and Iran on the other, some of these newer British vessels, increasingly seen as the future of naval warfare, could come into play.
Located in a discreet location, the factory is owned by the fast-growing British defense company Kraken, which this year signed a deal to supply a first batch of 20 small attack boats to the Royal Navy, and other deals to the US Special Operations Command and the US Navy in general.
Driven by venture capital, similar companies are springing up around the world, providing not only autonomous attack craft — considered essential to thwarting an eventual Chinese invasion of Taiwan or winning any NATO fight with Russia in the Baltic — but also a host of other unmanned systems.
The Kraken team says recent headlines about their success help give them a sense of mission — a feeling that Western democracies must be prepared to fight and find ways to minimize their casualties if they want to prevent wars from occurring.
The US military says it has used similar vessels in recent operations near the Gulf.
US Central Command, which oversees US operations in the Middle East, has been testing unmanned vessels for much of the current decade. European nations have honed their own technologies and skills with NATO’s X-Baltic Task Force, particularly in tracking Russian and other vessels that could interfere with undersea cables and other infrastructure.
Whether operated fully autonomously or by a helmsman based elsewhere connected via Starlink or similar satellite communications system, these vessels can carry a range of weapons and other payloads, including surveillance cameras, machine guns or enough onboard explosives to sink a large ship.
Iran appears to have used at least two of these vessels in its , a sign of how quickly naval warfare is changing.
