Maritime Autonomous Vehicles in Europe
Foreign platforms, sovereign underwater programmes and the architecture of a new naval market
Europe’s market for maritime autonomous vehicles is no longer a marginal technological niche, but it is not yet a mature or unified defence market. It is taking shape across several distinct segments: uncrewed surface vehicles for persistent maritime surveillance, autonomous underwater systems for inspection and future combat experimentation, towed sonar chains for mine countermeasures, and integrated underwater-security architectures for the protection of ports, cables, pipelines and seabed infrastructure. The central problem is therefore not simply which company produces the most capable vehicle, but which actors will control the full operational stack: sensors, autonomy software, payloads, data processing, command-and-control, integration with naval requirements and access to procurement channels.
The report is structured as a comparative map of this emerging category. It first defines the perimeter of maritime autonomous systems and separates surface, underwater, towed and integrated architectures. It then examines five core cases: Saildrone as a case of non-European platform penetration in Northern Europe; Naval Group as a French sovereign trajectory toward UCUV experimentation; Fincantieri as an Italian integrated underwater-security architecture built around DEEP; Anduril as the U.S. benchmark for software-defined autonomy and modular AUV industrialisation; and Kraken Robotics as a specialist in the mine-warfare and subsea-intelligence chain. The final sections assess mission sets, procurement patterns, cost-transparency limits, strategic autonomy implications and the indicators Defence Finance Monitor should monitor next.