Voltaic Marine equips its robotic ship with weapon turret

Voltaic Marine has completed live trials pairing its AEU39 uncrewed surface vessel with a Moog Space and Defense RIwP remote weapon turret, the company said this week.

During the trials, the turret drew power directly from the AEU39’s 300 kilowatt-hour battery bank through standard interfaces, while the vessel held position on the water. The RIwP, or Reconfigurable Integrated-weapons Platform, is an existing remote weapon station already fielded on other platforms.

Footage released alongside the announcement shows the weapon turret housed inside the AEU39’s bow, concealed beneath a hinged armored hatch that opens upward when the system needs to engage. With the hatch closed, the turret sits flush within the hull, giving the vessel a low profile until the weapon station is called into use.

The integration ran through the AEU39’s open payload architecture, which Voltaic Marine describes as built around two modular bays with a combined 4,000-pound (1,814-kilogram) capacity. The bow bay, where the RIwP was mounted for these trials, is designed to accept modular turret systems for maximum reconfigurability. A separate enclosed midship bay is built to launch and recover uncrewed aircraft from a stabilized deck, with its own set of reconfigurable payload options.

The vessel runs on electric propulsion, which Voltaic Marine says gives it a low acoustic and thermal signature, allowing the AEU39 to hold position without generating the noise or heat associated with a conventional engine. Power for the payload bays runs through an 800-volt to 12-volt conversion system, paired with open data and communications standards intended to let different payloads plug into the same architecture.

For autonomy and command and control, the company describes the AEU39 as agnostic to both, supporting waypoint transit, area patrol, loitering on station and repositioning on command through open interfaces meant to work with whatever autonomy or C2 systems a customer already operates.

Voltaic Marine said the platform is designed to deploy using standard commercial logistics rather than specialized transport. The company said the AEU39 can move by road trailer, launch from a boat ramp, or ship inside a 45-foot high-cube container, and is sized to fit aboard a C-17 or C-130 aircraft.

Voltaic Marine said the combination of the AEU39 and the RIwP turret is intended to let a fielded weapon system remain on station for extended periods, describing the vessel as capable of keeping the turret “on watch for weeks at a time.”

The company did not disclose the specific date or location of the trials, the customer or program involved, whether the RIwP was armed with live weapons during testing, or what performance data the trial produced.

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