France’s Naval Group unveils Seaquest, its first unmanned surface vessel

EURONAVAL 2024 — France’s national shipbuilder today unveiled its first ever unmanned surface vessel designed to operate in conjunction with manned warships following limited testing alongside the French Navy.

The drone, dubbed Seaquest and measuring approximately 30 feet long and 10 feet wide, and can be equipped with payloads focusing on intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting. It was designed by Naval Group, the French shipbuilder majority-owned by the state; Sirehna, a subsidiary of Naval Group; and Couach Shipyard, another French shipbuilder known for its commercial yachts.

“We see that an increasing number of navies are equipping themselves or thinking to equip themselves [with unmanned drones],” Aurore Neuschwander, executive vice president of drones and unmanned systems and underwater weapons at Naval Group, told a crowd here at the Euronaval exposition in Paris. “It becomes a glimpse of what future naval combat is set to become. This new context calls for navies to adapt.”

Neuschwander said the Seaquest can be operated from a ship or from ashore and was designed to be “fully integrated” with a frigate, landing helicopter docks or supply ships. When Neuschwander said the USV is “fully integrated” with the ship, she was referring to a short video that showed the vessel being deployed and recovered by French sailors using a davit attached to a warship.

“We wanted to have it available as soon as possible because operations don’t wait,” said Patrick Pennamen, CEO of Sirehna. “So based on our own experience in hydrodynamics and dynamic positioning, we have developed in less than one year a brand new system following an agile and incremental process, and today it’s operational at sea.”

Seaquest’s debut comes at a time when numerous international navies and their associated contractors have taken heightened interest in unmanned and autonomous maritime vessels. The Pentagon’s Replicator program has driven that home particularly hard with the US Navy which has been experimenting with numerous commercial-off-the-shelf USVs and UUVs with mixed success and at least preliminary investments into systems deemed worthwhile.

But for a company like Naval Group, a product’s debut has more implications than simply marketing. The shipbuilding giant is majority-owned by the state — and partly by another French aerospace and defense giant, Thales — meaning its research and development efforts are in part a reflection of the interests of the Ministry of Armed Forces and the country’s navy, Marine Nationale.