Seaglider Drone & UUV Complete Mid-Mission Retasking Trial

REGENT and NSI have successfully integrated an uncrewed ground-effect aircraft with an autonomous underwater vehicle to enable mid-mission retasking without requiring the undersea craft to surface.

The joint demonstration took place during the Maritime Big Play Pacific exercise off San Clemente Island in California. Sponsored by the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research & Engineering, the event brought government and industry teams together to evaluate uncrewed maritime, air, and command-and-control systems in a coastal environment featuring changing tides, shifting visibility, and variable weather.

During the scenario, teams deployed NSI’s Arowana unmanned underwater vehicle from a support vessel on a two-mile transit toward a simulated high-value target. While Arowana was underway in the island’s leeward waters, operators utilized REGENT’s Squire Seaglider drone as a mobile communications gateway to update the submersible’s mission tasking in real time based on incoming intelligence.

Squire is designed to fly in ground effect below radar line of sight at speeds of up to 70 knots, carrying a 50-pound configurable payload over a planned range exceeding 100 nautical miles for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, logistics, search and rescue, and anti-submarine warfare. Arowana is engineered to provide autonomous underwater capabilities for defense, border security, critical infrastructure protection, and commercial operations.

Becky Russo, Vice President, Defense at REGENT, said, “This is what partnership looks like when it is tested rather than described. Our teams integrated across vehicles, controllers and networks and delivered a result our government partners could see for themselves. We are proud to work with NSI and look forward to advancing the partnership.”

Alongside airborne gateway retasking, the teams demonstrated guidance of the Arowana over a fiber-optic tether to maintain control links in environments with limited radio communication. Operators also executed beyond-line-of-sight handoffs from a short-range controller to a longer-range ground control station.

To coordinate the mixed fleet of undersea, surface, and aerial assets from multiple providers, the teams verified line-of-sight radio links and Team Awareness Kit integration across the uncrewed aerial systems on the range. This integration provided operators with a single common operational picture, allowing tasking and control to pass seamlessly between systems during active operations rather than resetting between test runs.

Ed Rule, CEO of NSI, said, “Maritime Big Play gave us the chance to prove, in real conditions, that Squire and Arowana work as one system. Retasking an undersea vehicle mid-mission through a gateway vehicle is the kind of flexibility the fleet needs, and working alongside REGENT made it possible.”