A slender, partially covered naval ship that recently emerged in Washington state is the Defiant, a new medium-sized uncrewed surface vessel (USV) designed from the keel up to operate without any humans ever onboard. Developed under the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) program, Defiant could be an important stepping stone for the U.S. Navy’s ambitions to add larger and more capable USVs to its fleets.

DARPA confirmed to TWZ that construction of the Defiant, also known by the hull code USX-1, was completed earlier this month. As noted, the first indications that the vessel had been launched came from residents in Washington state who spotted it being pushed by a tug through the Saratoga Passage in Puget Sound north of Seattle. This area of the Sound is also just a few miles from the U.S. Navy’s Naval Air Station (NAS) Whidbey Island. User @IntelWalrus on X was first to bring this to our attention.

The 180-foot-long, 240-metric ton Defiant is now set to “undergo extensive in-water testing, both dockside and at sea” and “is scheduled to depart for a multi-month at sea demonstration in spring 2025,” according to DARPA. It is unclear where exactly the vessel is currently docked. Serco Inc. is the primary contractor for the USV, which it has been developing since 2020. The company has told TWZ in the past that the core Defiant USV without any add-on mission systems has an approximately $25 million price tag.

The U.S. military has historically categorized uncrewed vessels like Defiant with lengths under 200 feet and displacements under 500 tons but that are larger than ones with speedboat and jetski-type designs, as medium USVs (MUSV). Large USVs (LUSV) have been defined as ones up to 300 feet long and that displace up to 2,000 tons.

A picture of Defiant in the Puget Sound, as well as additional images DARPA has now released, show much of the vessel literally still under wraps. However, the overall hullform, along with the mast at the center sporting various commercial navigation radars and other antennas, is in line with models and computer-generated renders of the design shown in the past. An additional smaller mast with more radars and other antennas is also present on the bow.

Other details about Defiant as it exists now are limited and TWZ has also reached out to Serco for more information. NOMARS program requirements DARPA released in the past called for designs capable of long-duration open-ocean operation with distributed hybrid power generation, podded propulsors, and high-capacity batteries, as well as a high-degree of hydrodynamic efficiency.

The NOMARS program has also put an emphasis on a concept called “graceful degradation” wherein “individual equipment to fail over time by having enough system-level redundancy to meet full system requirements at speeds of at least 15 knots after one year at sea.”

As designed, Defiant has large open spaces on top of its deck in front of and behind its main mast for add-on payloads. Secro has shown models loaded with standard shipping containers, which could hold an array of different mission systems, as well as general cargo. The company has also shown how the USV might be armed using what BAE Systems is now marketing as the Adaptable Deck Launching System (ADL). The ADL is a modular angled launcher designed to fire missiles from the same canisters used with the Mk 41 Vertical Launch System (VLS) found on many U.S. and foreign warships. As such, ADLs can launch a variety of surface-to-air, anti-ship, and land-attack missiles, as well as anti-submarine rockets.

Defiant, at least initially, is intended primarily as a testbed to demonstrate the ability of such a vessel to operate autonomously for extended periods without any humans ever being onboard, even just to monitor systems and provide extra margins of safety.

“The NOMARS program aims to challenge the traditional naval architecture model, designing a seaframe (the ship without mission systems) from the ground up with no provision, allowance, or expectation for humans on board,” DARPA says on its website.

 

“By removing the human element from all ship design considerations, the program intends to demonstrate significant advantages, to include: size, cost, at-sea reliability, greater hydrodynamic efficiency, survivability to sea-state, and survivability to adversary actions through stealth considerations and tampering resistance.”

Last year, DARPA, in cooperation with the U.S. Navy, conducted a successful test of an at-sea refueling system developed to support the NOMARS mission. Two Navy USVs, the Ranger and the Mariner, which are converted offshore support vessels that retain the ability to operate in crewed mode, were used to demonstrate the refueling system.

“Fueling at sea (FAS) for USVs presents a problem that needs to be solved as current FAS solutions use personnel to handle lines and hoses on the platform being refueled,” according to a press release DARPA put out in December.

 

“Requiring personnel on the USV for the operation adds significant constraints on USV design and operations, as the vessel must then be designed with considerations for safety of the humans on board, even if for a short period of time. It can also be risky and sometimes dangerous to transport personnel to a USV in rough seas or high winds.”

“For the recent test, USV Ranger carried a receiving station representative of the system that will be on the NOMARS USV Defiant, and USV Mariner carried a refueling ‘mini-station,’ custom-designed by NOMARS prime contractor Serco Inc,” the release added. “While there were personnel aboard both vessels during the event, no people were involved with operations on the receiving side.”

However, Serco has already been actively pitching Defiant as at least a pathway to a range of operational capabilities, including new armed USVs and ones capable of acting as uncrewed logistics platforms. The company has already been working on a larger USV concept called Dauntless leveraging the work done under NOMARS, which could be armed with up to four ADLs, as well as carry other payloads.

Defiant was also designed with ease of production in mind and Serco has previously told TWZ that the USVs could be produced outside of traditional shipyards, including by railworks, if needed. This could make the design, or future variants or derivatives thereof, very attractive to the U.S. Navy, which has been facing increasingly worrisome struggles to acquire traditional crewed warships. That has come amid broader concerns about U.S. shipyard capacity, or the lack thereof, for building new naval vessels and maintaining existing ones. The U.S. shipbuilding industry continues to be grossly outpaced by that of China, America’s current chief global competitor, despite efforts to narrow the gap in recent years.

Earlier this year, the Navy announced plans to simplify its USV acquisition strategy to focus on smaller, simpler, and more interchangeable designs rather than larger and exquisite ones. The service had previously been working toward fielding distinct fleets of MUSVs and LUSVs.

“The designs already exist, and we must not over-spec this,” Rear Adm. William Daly, head of the Navy’s surface warfare division (N96), told an audience, including TWZ, at the Surface Navy Association’s annual symposium in January. “We’ve also had sufficient funding and experimentation to date to know what we need.”

 

“Many of the payloads are ready and tested. [Concepts of operation] are coalescing,” Daly added. “Let’s move faster. This is efficient, this is effective, and this is scalable.”

DARPA’s NOMARS program, especially now with Defiant about to head off for its first at-sea demonstrations, looks set to be another important part of the U.S. military’s uncrewed naval future.

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We’re excited to announce that Nubila, a DePIN protocol building the world’s largest Real World Data Network, will use Theta EdgeCloud’s distributed GPU resources to support AI model training on the large data sets generated by their real-time weather data network.

Nubila transforms untapped IoT and industrial data into Real-World Data Assets (RWDA), bridging machine intelligence with advanced AI to empower Earth and beyond. By enabling hyperlocal, actionable insights, Nubila enhances next-gen climate simulations like Nvidia Earth-2, driving precision in weather-driven finance and sustainable innovation. As the world faces climate risks that could cost trillions of dollars to mitigate, Nubila’s groundbreaking data solutions not only build resilience for the economy but also lay the groundwork for Elon Musk’s vision of life on Mars — fueling the intelligence needed for a multi-planetary future.

Nubila is revolutionizing weather data collection with the Marco — a DePIN solution that allows users to collect real-time weather data and contribute it to a global sustainability network. Users aren’t just collecting data; they’re unlocking new opportunities to monetize their contributions while driving real-world impact. The analysis of these billions of data points naturally requires significant compute resources, and Theta EdgeCloud is ready to deliver that with over 10,000 distributed edge nodes, and cloud partners including Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services offering over 80 PetaFLOPS of always available distributed GPU compute power. This vast resource pool enables enterprises, academic institutions, and startups alike to overcome the limitations of traditional in-house GPU clusters, which are often costly to maintain and challenging to scale.

Nubila joins the ranks of EdgeCloud ecosystem partners such as NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights, FlyQuest esports, University of Oregon, Seoul National University, NTU Singapore, JamCoding, and many more.

Nubila is backed by an elite team of crypto and data industry veterans who bring deep expertise in blockchain, AI, and weather intelligence. Leading the charge are Prof. Bob Chien, a founding member of Galxe, and Toby Skinner, the Ex-CMO of The Weather Company, both shaping Nubila’s vision for a decentralized weather data revolution.

Adding to the firepower, Nubila is advised by Raullen Chai, founder of IoTeX, and Jonathan King from Coinbase Ventures, bringing strategic insight and industry-leading experience to drive Nubila’s mission forward.

Welcome to the Theta Network, Nubila!

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Today SBI VC Trade, a cryptocurrency exchange subsidiary of Japan’s SBI Holdings, said it has become the first Japanese firm to be licensed as an “Electronic Payment Instruments Exchange Service Provider”. The license is required to handle offshore stablecoins such as Circle’s USDC. SBI Holdings and Circle inked a collaboration deal in late 2023 to launch Circle’s USDC stablecoin in Japan.

SBI VC Trade was already licensed as a crypto exchange and for securities business.

It plans to start a beta version of USDC services in ten days.

The move is notable for two reasons. Firstly, the USD – Yen exchange rate is an important one. To date stablecoins have mainly been used for crypto transactions and for emerging market residents to hold dollars. It has also been used for cross border payments, again mainly in emerging markets.

On the other hand, according to Swift, the Yen is the fifth most widely used currency for cross border payments, and ranks third (5.42%) if you exclude transactions between European firms.

Many are more skeptical about the utility of stablecoins for cross border payments between developed economies, particularly the US and Europe. It remains to be seen if the same applies to Japan.

Clearly stablecoins have potential in foreign exchange, especially at the retail level.

Payments firms eye stablecoins for cross border

While SBI VC Trade is a crypto exchange, several organizations in the Japanese payments sector are also interested in stablecoins for cross border payments.

Japan’s largest bank, MUFG, is trialing stablecoins as an invisible backend alternative to Swift for cross border payments, alongside the other big three banks. Separately, it co-founded Progmat Coin, which is exploring stablecoins for various types of cross border payments, including trade in emerging markets. Progmat also has a collaboration with Japanese stablecoin issuer JPYC, which applied for the same electronic payment instrument license granted to SBI VC Trade.

Soramitsu is exploring cross border payments by integrating stablecoins with Cambodia’s Bakong digital payment system, which it developed.

Ironically, the largest Yen stablecoin wasn’t issued in Japan. It was launched by the New York registered trust GMO-Z which issues the GYen (Market cap: $10m) and ZUSD (market cap: $18m) stablecoins. GMO-Z is part of Japan’s GMO Internet Group.

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