Blue Ops brings boat-building focus to USV market

A static display of the Blue Ops 7 m Variant 7 USV at the company's headquarters in West Palm Beach, Florida. Mock missiles from partner company Aeon are shown aft. (Janes/Jeremiah Cushman)

Red Cat Holdings launched its Blue Ops maritime business unit in August 2025, and demonstrated its first product, the Variant 7 (V7) unmanned surface vehicle (USV), during an innovation day attended by Janes at Blue Ops headquarters in West Palm Beach, Florida, in late February.

The V7 was “only an idea in August. We began production in October, and we launched the boat in December”, Barry Hinckley, president of Blue Ops, said during a presentation, adding that “we began autonomising it in January”.

A trio of the boats was demonstrated on Lake Okeechobee, west of West Palm Beach, during the innovation day.

Blue Ops is “focused on building boats … my team are boat builders and technologists. We build affordable, reliable, and durable boats”, with the goal of building at scale, Hinckley said.

“Most of our competitors have said, we have a great piece of technology. We need to build a boat to put it on. We started with the concept that we need the best, most reliable, durable boat, and then we're going to put the technology on,” he said.

V7 capabilities

The V7 “is 7.8 m [25 ft 7 in] long [and] it'll do 800 n mi at 40 kt… That boat has a payload capacity of 1,800 lb forward of the midsection. We don't really envision any payloads weighing more than 1,000 [lb]”, enabling additional fuel capacity, Hinckley said.