The U.S. Navy is pushing its unmanned surface fleet out of the PowerPoint stage and into the business end of naval warfare, which is exactly where this technology belongs.
Just over two weeks after U.S. Central Command used three Corsair unmanned surface vessels to strike a submarine and ship maintenance facility at Iran’s Bandar Abbas naval base, the Navy has confirmed another major step forward.
That Iran operation marked the “first time American forces have employed sea drones in combat operations,” and now the fleet is proving the concept in live fire training.
The latest milestone came during a live sinking exercise off Hawaii, where two former U.S. warships were sent to the bottom during the biennial Rim of the Pacific exercise.
The amphibious assault ship USS Peleliu and the cruiser USS Mobile Bay both became targets in a training event designed to sharpen real world combat capability.
On July 24, the Navy released footage showing the sinking, including video of the Global Autonomous Reconnaissance Craft, known as GARC, targeting the hulk of the former USS Peleliu.
For a service trying to move faster on autonomous systems, the image was not subtle.
Sarah Weinstein, a surface warfare officer serving as the first commanding officer of Unmanned Surface Vessel Division 32, said her unit executed the Navy’s first GARC live fire. Her division, USVDIV 32, was behind the operation.
“It was incredible to watch my team execute with precision and we were thrilled to provide a perspective of the former USS Peleliu that often isn’t often captured in a SINKEX,” Weinstein wrote on LinkedIn.
The sinking took place on July 17, with the GARC playing a central role in the Peleliu SINKEX.
That matters because these exercises are not ceremonial fireworks shows, no matter how badly the soft handed crowd in Washington sometimes treats military innovation like a tech demo.
The GARC is built by BlackSea Technologies, a Baltimore based company that calls the craft the “most proven tactical sUSV on the water.”
The small vessel is designed to give commanders a flexible tool for reconnaissance, targeting, escort missions, and maritime awareness.
The 16 foot craft can carry a payload of up to 1,000 pounds and travel 700 nautical miles at 22 knots, according to the company.
BlackSea says the GARC “combines modular payload flexibility, advanced autonomy, and rugged endurance.”
That combination is why the Navy is taking the platform seriously.
A small, fast, uncrewed surface vessel that can scout, watch, track, and potentially help strike targets gives commanders more options without immediately putting sailors in harm’s way.
Operators can control the vessels one at a time or manage them as a swarm. They can also be driven manually or assigned a target to follow using radar, giving the fleet a scalable tool for contested waters where seconds and signatures matter.
In August 2025, the Navy said it was “experimenting with the Global Autonomous Reconnaissance Craft (GARC)” to support naval operations. Last month, USVDIV 32 also used the drone boats during Exercise BALTOPS 2026, one of NATO’s major maritime exercises.
“We are at the beginning and we don’t even know where we’re going to take it yet,” Weinstein told The Wall Street Journal in June.
“The GARC originally was designed to kind of do a limited skill set, and we’ve turned it into something that can do escort, that can do surveillance, intelligence, maritime domain awareness, and we’ve already with one platform been able to expand what is in the realm of possible.”
That is the key point. The Navy is not merely testing a gadget, it is expanding the menu of what sea control may look like in a future fight.
China is building ships at a pace that should wake up anyone still hitting the snooze button, and Iran has already learned that unmanned systems can reach into places adversaries would rather keep comfortable.
If the Navy can field cheap, rugged, and expendable platforms alongside crewed warships, the math of maritime power begins to change.
The GARC’s role in sinking the former USS Peleliu is another testing milestone on the road toward operational deployment.
The sooner the fleet turns promising systems into combat ready tools, the better positioned America will be when deterrence stops being a slogan and starts being measured in steel, sensors, and firepower.
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