U.S. Landing-Drone Startup Gets Support From a Small Japanese Shipyard

American defense tech startup Bulwark Dynamics is working with a Japanese shipbuilder on an autonomous landing craft – a system that could bring cargo into the combat zone without putting servicemembers at risk.

Bulwark is in the very early stages of its evolution. Its Japanese partner, Onomichi Dockyard, is a mature small shipyard located towards the west end of Honshu, near Okayama; it is also an investor, having joined a group of VC funders in Bulwark's initial $6.8 million seed funding round. The proceeds will go towards building and testing its prototype Caravel autonomous landing craft. 

Bulwark pitches its vessel as a solution to the Navy's distributed-logistics problem. In a battle in the littorals of the Western Pacific, the service would face concerted pressure, which it plans to counter through distributed maritime operations (DMO) – in essence, dispersing its forces to make them harder to hit. The dispersal strategy also has to include the logistics chain, Bulwark says, in order to prevent the enemy from targeting and destroying supply vessels and depots. 

This is where a fleet of numerous, small, autonomous landing craft would come in. The idea isn't to land  Marines onto the beach for an opposed landing – it's to move their cargo to austere locations, where there is no port infrastructure. It is designed to self-navigate, beach itself, lower its bow ramp and discharge cargo, then depart off the beach, all without human involvement on the ground. 

"Sustainment has to survive to matter. Caravel takes people off the most exposed leg of the run and spreads the delivery across many low-cost hulls, so losing one is a bad day rather than the end of the resupply," said Nhat Lieu, co-founder and CEO of Bulwark Dynamics.

The product positions Bulwark in a new category, outside of the two main areas of U.S. Navy procurement competition: unmanned patrol craft (at the small end) and medium unmanned surface vessels (at the large end).

Beach-capable landing-vessel drones were first tested in combat in Ukraine, albeit at a small scale. In July, during an operation to attack Russian positions on the Kinburn Spit, Ukraine's 123rd Separate Territorial Defense Brigade dispatched a remotely-controlled landing vessel with a bow ramp and a single ground-attack robot on board. Video captured the beach landing and the first minutes of the operation that ensued (below).

Last week, Ukrainian forces conducted a completely unmanned amphibious landing on the Kinburn Spit, the first of its kind. Seen here, a Ukrainian drone landing craft drops off a UGV to attack Russian positions along the beach. pic.twitter.com/Dn5uui08I4