Saildrone Inc.

Saildrone Inc. operates exclusively as a prime contractor delivering autonomous unmanned surface vehicle (USV) operations and high-resolution maritime data collection services to nine federal agencies, with no federal subcontract footprint and no SBA set-aside certifications. The company is a for-profit entity headquartered in Alameda, California, competing in full-and-open procurements. Saildrone designs, builds, and operates wind and solar-powered autonomous surface vessels equipped with oceanographic, meteorological, and environmental sensor packages to collect maritime data without requiring onboard human operators.

Saildrone's customer concentration is extreme and non-diversified. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration dominates both volume and potential value, accounting for 43 of 67 prime awards (64% of total) with $11.08 billion in combined potential value—97% of Saildrone's entire federal portfolio ceiling. The U.S. Coast Guard ranks second with nine awards totaling $74.9 million combined potential value. The Department of the Navy (two awards, $72.6 million ceiling), Office of the Secretary of Defense (two awards, $57.7 million ceiling), Office of Naval Research (two awards, $30.6 million ceiling), U.S. Geological Survey (four awards, $1.1 million), and NASA Shared Services Center (four awards, $389 thousand) round out the customer set—together accounting for just 3% of Saildrone's total federal footprint. This concentration exposes the vendor to material recompete risk: seven awards with combined potential value of $66.7 million reach ultimate completion inside the next twenty-four months, including major NOAA IDIQs and Coast Guard BPA calls.

Saildrone holds six named parent vehicles anchoring its prime work. The NOAA ProTech Services Solution (formerly ProTech 2.0 Fisheries Domain)—an $8 billion multiple-award IDIQ set aside for small business, awarded March 29, 2024, with completion through September 23, 2029—accounts for the largest ceiling and reflects Saildrone's primary ordering vehicle; 16 task orders carrying $9.9 million in combined potential value have been placed against it. Recent task orders under ProTech 2.0 Fisheries include a $10 million firm fixed-price delivery order awarded April 13, 2026, for Southern Ocean data collection operations supporting NOAA fisheries research (completion April 12, 2031, performance based in Seattle, Washington). The U.S. Coast Guard's $37 million single-award BPA established August 11, 2025, for maritime domain awareness across Northeast, Great Lakes, Southeast, and Southwest districts (running through August 10, 2028) has generated five BPA calls totaling $31.9 million combined potential value, including a $15.6 million call for continuous maritime domain awareness in the Northeast and Great Lakes (awarded March 17, 2026, completion March 16, 2027) and three calls for Southwest and Southeast District operations totaling approximately $7.8 million (awarded February, September, and September 2025, each with September 11, 2026 completion dates). Saildrone also holds a $9.6 million single-award BPA with NOAA under the GSA Multiple Award Schedule for uncrewed surface vehicle in situ data services (awarded June 1, 2023, running through May 31, 2025); a GSA Federal Supply Schedule contract (June 7, 2022, through June 6, 2027, $500,000 ceiling) offering maritime domain awareness, bathymetry surveys, and metocean data collection at published daily rates ranging from $2,670 to $8,393; a Department of the Navy Other Transaction IDV with $72.6 million ceiling (awarded September 8, 2025) following the Voyager Kickoff Meeting; and three NOAA Indefinite Delivery Contracts—each valued at $7.5 million (awarded September 1, 2023, through August 31, 2026)—for ocean exploration and characterization, living marine resource surveys, and meteorological and oceanographic observations.

Recent prime contract work illustrates Saildrone's capability scope across civilian oceanographic and maritime-operations missions. A $30.1 million Other Transaction Agreement with the Office of Naval Research (awarded August 29, 2024, completion March 2, 2028) procures demonstration of USV capability to complete essential Navy missions. A $54.1 million production-focused Other Transaction Agreement with the Office of the Secretary of Defense (awarded September 22, 2022, completion December 1, 2025) supports Voyager Drones production at Saildrone's Alameda facility. NOAA delivery orders span hurricane observations ($7.3 million awarded October 1, 2025, completion December 31, 2027, for Key Biscayne operations and $6.1 million awarded May 2, 2023, completion May 1, 2025), meteorological and oceanographic observations ($3.8 million awarded October 1, 2025, completion December 31, 2027, and $991 thousand awarded September 10, 2024, completion October 31, 2026), Gulf of Maine bathymetric mapping ($2.1 million awarded August 1, 2023, completion May 13, 2025, under GSA MAS), and buoy observations ($1.7 million awarded July 1, 2023, completion September 28, 2025). The U.S. Geological Survey awarded a definitive contract for acoustic sensor fisheries data collection on Lakes Erie, Michigan, and Huron (March 13, 2023, ceiling $426,750, completion July 8, 2028). Coast Guard work includes continuous maritime domain awareness and ISR support for maritime law enforcement and Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) compliance across multiple regional districts.

Activity has declined substantially year over year: nine awards in 2022, ten in 2023, five in 2024, six in 2025, and four to date in 2026. This contraction reflects neither loss of customer confidence—NOAA continues to place orders—but rather the transition from individual contract awards and BPA calls to consolidation under larger IDIQs and other vehicles. Saildrone operates with zero subcontractor footprint; the SCI dataset shows all 28 prime service contracts were self-performed (0% sub-hours share). SCI-reported invoiced revenue totaled $16.4 million across FY2022–FY2025 ($3.1 million in FY2022, $3.6 million in FY2023, $6.5 million in FY2024, $3.3 million in FY2025), a material undercount of Saildrone's true federal services revenue because SCI excludes goods, products, and microtickets—Saildrone's core federal business is the manufacture and operation of autonomous vessels and data collection, much of which falls outside the $150,000 SCI reporting threshold or is categorized as product delivery rather than services. FTE counts in SCI reflect only labor-intensive portions of orders: FY2023 showed 0.5 FTEs, FY2024 peaked at 4.1 FTEs, and FY2025 fell to 2.6 FTEs. On the labor hours captured in SCI, median government-paid rates ran around $560.78 per hour, with ranges from $0.00 per hour (anomaly likely indicating fixed-price orders or data products priced outside hourly labor models) to $3,803.17 per hour for senior technical roles. The vendor's federal services model does not rely on large deployed teams but on specialized engineering, mission planning, and vessel operations support tied to autonomous platform deployments and data delivery.

1. SAILDRONE INC. is a full-service, ocean and atmospheric data service provider and operator of proprietary, innovative and cost-efficient unmanned, autonomous maritime surface vehicles (USVs or Saildrones). These USVs have an integrated suite of environmental and Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) and Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) sensors, for the specific purpose of collecting high-resolution atmospheric, surface and sub-surface ocean data and then generating respective data products for a variety of customers and missions. Saildrones are unmanned surface vehicles (USV) engineered for oceanographic research and offshore data collection and powered by wind and solar energy.