Navy Drone Project: Abandoned Naval Drone from the 1990s
- In the wake of Ukraine's accomplished strikes on the Russian Black Sea Fleet using low-cost, agile unmanned surface vessels (USVs), the global defense community has shifted focus to...
- Yet, long before kyiv's sea drones earned battlefield credibility, a little-known American platform had already proven its potential - and was quietly buried.
- Howard Hornsby, now in his seventies, was behind the OWL MK II - a modular unmanned surface vehicle developed in the late 1980s and tested extensively in the...
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The Buried History of the OWL MK II USV: A Precursor to Ukraine’s Success
In the wake of Ukraine’s accomplished strikes on the Russian Black Sea Fleet using low-cost, agile unmanned surface vessels (USVs), the global defense community has shifted focus to a domain once considered niche.
Yet, long before kyiv’s sea drones earned battlefield credibility, a little-known American platform had already proven its potential – and was quietly buried.
Howard Hornsby, now in his seventies, was behind the OWL MK II - a modular unmanned surface vehicle developed in the late 1980s and tested extensively in the 1990s. Despite its early technical maturity, the OWL project faced institutional resistance from the U.S. Department of Defense.
Developed beginning in 1984 under the name International Robotic Systems, the unmanned surface vessel program later operated as Navtec Inc. starting in 1995. In 2004,the OWL platform was transferred to Universal Secure Applications,LLC,a woman-owned company led by Howard Hornsby’s wife,Karen,as CEO. All growth was privately funded from the start, with the earliest OWL prototypes featuring modular architecture, autonomous control, and real-time ISR capability.
From 1995 to 1997, the OWL MK II operated under U.S. Navy DET 1 in Bahrain, conducting harbor protection, minehunting, littoral anti-submarine warfare (ASW), and covert surveillance. It integrated easily with existing naval vessels and could be deployed by air, launched from small ships, or air-dropped. During FBE-Juliet 1997, a fleet battle experiment off San Diego, it demonstrated its capacity to outperform much larger and costlier systems in real-world conditions.
But success came at a cost. “We were told it was too advanced and low cost,” hornsby said. “Upsetting a lot of high-dollar funded DOD programs and rice bowls.” A planned order for 15 units by NSWC/ONR – intended for deployment on U.S. Navy ships in the Gulf – was canceled just before the USS Cole attack. Hornsby was told the Department of Defense could not “give the impression publicly that we had any threats in the area.”
Eventually, the project ran out of support. “Our company had to close down operations for USVs in the early 2000s,” he said. Despite winning more than 41 contracts with the Office of Special Technology (OST) in the 1990s, the program never became a formal line item. “There was no ORD for it… OST wasn’t allowed to market or endorse any of the products. Very strange!” Hornsby added.
The OWL MK II wasn’t a one-off platform. It was modular and scalable - ranging from 3 to over 11 meters. Later variants reached speeds over 70 knots, carried up to 1,450 lbs of payload, and operated more than 36 hours at sea, even in rough conditions.
The control systems,branded NEURALTRONIC,were JAUS-interoperable,enabling rapid integration with common sensor types and other naval platforms.
The OWL fleet executed various mission sets: ISR,mine countermeasures (M
Key Capabilities of the OWL MK II
| Feature | Specification |
|---|---|
| Size range | 3 – 11+ meters |
| Maximum Speed | 70+ knots |
| Payload Capacity |