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6h ago

ABS Grants Full Class to Saildrone’s 65-Foot Surveyor for Deep-Ocean Missions

The designation underscores industry acceptance of large autonomous surface vessels, enabling longer deployments under formal safety standards.

The Saildrone Surveyor, a fully autonomous deepwater unmanned surface vehicle (USV).
The Saildrone Surveyor is a 20-meter USV capable of long-endurance missions in the open ocean, collecting deep-ocean bathymetry and performing a wide range of maritime domain awareness tasks—from anti-submarine warfare (ASW) to trans-ocean cable route surveys. (Saildrone picture)

Overview

  • ABS issued full classification on August 27 for the 20-meter Surveyor, Saildrone’s largest unmanned surface vessel.
  • The platform operates fully autonomously with no crew onboard and is monitored around the clock by Saildrone’s Mission Management team.
  • Surveyor supports deep-ocean bathymetry and maritime domain awareness missions, with recent trials integrating Thales’ BlueSentry towed sonar for detecting surface ships, submarines and UUVs.
  • The class notation assigned is ✠A1, DV Naval Craft, AUTONOMOUS (NAV, MNV, PRP, AUX, RO3) under ABS rules for light warships and high-speed naval vessels.
  • The milestone builds on ABS class for the 10-meter Voyager in 2023 and, according to Saildrone and ABS, signals readiness to scale deployments for government and commercial users.