UAV Mechanical Design Engineer

A UK company just showed a drone boat that takes loitering munitions, mini torpedoes, drones or sonobuoys as cassettes two people exchange in the field without touching the hull, and it says an Anduril ALTIUS has already gone out of one. Sep 9, at 8:00am ET If you ever owned a car with a tape deck, you already understand the pitch here. The hardware never changed. You pushed in a different cassette and the same machine did something new. The deck didn't care what was on the tape. SubSea Craft, a maritime tech company based in Portsmouth, England, announced on September 4 that its MARS drone boat now handles weapons exactly that way: as cassettes that slide into the hull and come back out, swapped by a two-person team wherever the boat happens to be deployed. The system's patent-pending, and SubSea Craft's announcement says a swap doesn't involve modifying the vessel itself. The company lists loitering munitions, miniature torpedoes, aerial drones and sonobuoys as potential cassettes, all delivered from the same hull. "Operators can swap cassettes quickly and easily," in the words of Tom Harkin, SubSea Craft's chief commercial officer. So why does a drone boat need a tape deck? Because bolting a new weapon onto a boat is normally a project, not a chore. Somebody has to engineer the mounts, run the wiring, integrate the software, and then prove at sea that none of it broke anything else. That work happens at a dock, it takes engineers, and it starts over with every new payload. So plenty of drone boats spend their whole careers doing the one job they were wired for on day one. The cassette moves all of that work into the box. The boat keeps one standard slot; the payload shows up already packaged to fit it. SubSea Craft says the point is cutting integration timelines so new payloads get to sea faster, and the field-swap part is what separates this from a shipyard upgrade. A two-person team handles it. That's the whole pitch. You've seen other answers to the same question here before. A British 56-footer Autonocion covered in August was built around a 20-foot shipping container slot, and Ukraine's newest Magura carries 18 interceptors in boxes bolted to its deck. The cassette is the smallest of the three approaches and arguably the most portable: a container needs a crane and a port, deck boxes are built around whatever sits inside them, and a cassette needs two people and wherever the boat already is. An Anduril ALTIUS has already gone out the slot. This isn't a concept render. SubSea Craft says the cassette system has already been used to integrate Anduril's ALTIUS, and it released an image that Naval News ran with a caption describing MARS launching the ALTIUS through the new system. SubSea Craft's own image says it happened. If you haven't met the ALTIUS, it's a tube-launched drone from Anduril that flies out, loiters, and either watches something or dives into it. Anduril builds it to launch from the ground, the air or the sea, so a tube sitting in a cassette is, frankly, about as natural a fit as this idea gets. What SubSea Craft hasn't said is when or where that launch happened, and I can't find a date or a location for it anywhere else. That's a fairly big blank in an announcement built around the event. So the launch stands confirmed by the company, and nobody's published a date. So how big is this boat, exactly? Here's the odd part: the company's MARS page doesn't publish the boat's dimensions today. It calls the craft low-signature and high-speed, says it went from design to the water within 100 days, and sums up the resume as built in the UK, trialed in open water in Australia with the Australian Maritime College, and tested with US payloads. SubSea Craft pitches it for maritime domain awareness, persistent surveillance, countering other unmanned systems, and full ISTAR work, which is the military's umbrella term for finding things, watching them and lining up a shot. SubSea Craft has put numbers on this hull before, though. You'll just have to go back to when the boat first got wet. A company official told the defense outlet Shephard that MARS reaches up to 30 knots (about 35 mph) and up to 300 nautical miles (roughly 345 miles), and reporting around the debut put the hull at about 19.7 feet (6 meters). None of that made the current spec sheet. The upgraded MARS went into production in May, and I'd treat all three figures as the company's claims for the first boat rather than measurements of the one now being built. Design to water From concept to floating, per SubSea Craft's own product page. Cassette swap team In the field, with no changes to the boat. Demonstrated with the Anduril ALTIUS. Claimed top speed About 35 mph, per an SSC official at the boat's debut. Not on the current spec sheet. Claimed range Roughly 345 statute miles, claimed for the original boat, not re-published for the production version. Compare that with how the neighbors do it. ZeroUSV cut a 20-foot container slot into a 56-foot hull; SubSea Craft's cassettes go into a boat roughly a third that length. The Magura MV11 hauls its 18 interceptor boxes on a 39-foot deck. A smaller hull gives up payload, sure, but it also buys a boat that'll launch from a bigger ship, work rivers as well as open water, and get rearmed on-site by the same two people. I suspect that last part's what the patent application is really about. SubSea Craft published the cassette announcement on September 4 with the ALTIUS already through the slot, and the upgraded MARS it slides into has been in production since May. Tom Harkin's team now gets to find out which cassette a customer asks for first. Frequently asked questions. AI-assisted contextual content, generated to enrich your reading. What operational roles can modular payload cassettes enable for unmanned surface vessels? Modular payload cassettes allow USVs to swiftly integrate mission-specific modules for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance sensors; radio frequency decoys; signal intelligence equipment; communications relays; electronic warfare systems; and loitering munitions, enabling a single platform to adapt rapidly to diverse operational requirements in contested maritime environments. How do modular payload cassettes improve mission turnaround and logistics for USVs? By using a plug-and-play cassette system, operators can exchange payloads without modifying the vessel or requiring dockside alterations, significantly reducing reconfiguration time and simplifying supply chains by standardizing module interfaces. What are the primary technical challenges in developing cassette exchange mechanisms for maritime platforms? Key challenges include achieving watertight seals to prevent water ingress under wave impact and pressure fluctuations; ensuring materials and mechanical latches resist corrosion and biofouling in saltwater; and maintaining precise alignment and reliable mechanical engagement under dynamic sea states and vessel motion. What capabilities does the Anduril ALTIUS loitering munition bring when deployed from USVs? The Anduril ALTIUS-700M offers multispectral launch capability with up to 75 minutes of endurance, a range of approximately 100 miles, and a warhead payload capacity of about 33 pounds, providing USVs with expeditionary strike options at standoff distances. How do modular payload systems on USVs compare to modular payload concepts in unmanned aerial systems? While both platforms leverage standardized interfaces and interchangeable modules to streamline integration, maritime systems require enhanced waterproofing, corrosion resistance, and structural reinforcement against hydrodynamic forces, whereas aerial systems prioritize weight reduction, aerodynamic performance, and compliance with airworthiness regulations. What regulatory and safety considerations apply when equipping unmanned surface vessels with loitering munitions? Equipping USVs with weapons requires prior certification and registration, disarmament during trials, and authorization from naval or maritime authorities; compliance with technical-domain approvals for ordnance integration; and adherence to national code provisions governing military drone operations and weapons safety standards. This content was generated using AI and reviewed according to publisher guidelines. THE LOT via The Lot Agree or laugh out loud? 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SubSea Craft launches modular cassette system to rapidly reconfigure MARS USV. * 4 September 2026 * Edited By: Ed Freeman SubSea Craft (SSC) has unveiled a new modular payload cassette system for MARS, their compact Unmanned Surface Vessel (USV), enabling the delivery of mission-configurable effects in contested environments. (Credit: SubSea Craft) Designed for expeditionary operations, the new patent-pending system uses dedicated cassettes which can be installed, removed, and exchanged by a two-person team while deployed. This allows MARS to be quickly reconfigured for different missions, reducing integration timelines and accelerating the introduction of new payloads. The cassette system has been informed by end user engagement, supporting MARS' ability to adapt to evolving operational requirements while maintaining a simple and deployable operating concept. Potential payload cassettes include loitering munitions, miniature torpedoes, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), sonobuoys, and other mission-specific equipment, all delivered from the same core platform. The payload cassette system has already supported the successful integration of the Anduril ALTIUS loitering munition, demonstrating MARS' ability to rapidly integrate and deploy new effectors through a simple cassette exchange without modification to the vessel itself. Tom Harkin, Chief Commercial Officer, said: "Ocean News has designed the cassette system to make payload integration as simple as possible. Rather than making changes to the vessel every time a new payload is introduced, operators can swap cassettes quickly and easily. It gives MARS the flexibility to evolve as mission requirements change while keeping the platform itself unchanged. The ability to rapidly integrate and deploy new payloads and effectors is becoming increasingly important. The cassette system supports that approach and gives users far greater flexibility in how they configure and employ MARS." Don't miss the headlines. ON&T's Top 10, every week. More in Science & Tech