AUSTIN, Texas — Saronic has launched the Mirage, a new 52-foot dual-use autonomous surface vessel (ASV), adding a third flagship platform to its growing fleet of uncrewed surface vessels. The company announced the launch on July 2 after taking the vessel from initial design to the water in less than a year.
The first Mirage has already started on-water trials at Saronic's privately funded test facility in Galveston, Texas. Production is continuing at the company's Austin headquarters, where a second hull is already moving through the manufacturing line.
The Mirage sits between Saronic's 24-foot Corsair and 180-foot Marauder in both size and capability. It has a top speed of more than 35 knots, an operational range exceeding 2,500 nautical miles, and can carry payloads of up to 3,500 pounds. Compared with the Corsair, the new vessel more than doubles both range and payload capacity.
The vessel can operate fully autonomously or under remote human supervision through Saronic's Echelon command-and-control platform, which provides a common autonomy software stack across the company's fleet. The software supports mission planning, simulation and real-time oversight, allowing operators to manage multiple vessels, including in communications-limited conditions.
Its open, modular architecture allows government and commercial off-the-shelf sensors, payloads and communications systems to be integrated without structural modifications. Saronic said the Mirage is intended for maritime domain awareness, maritime security, and aerial and surface target detection missions.
All hardware and software for the Mirage are developed at Saronic's Austin facility. The company said the site has capacity to produce hundreds of Mirage vessels each year while also building thousands of Corsair platforms. The first Mirage hull will undergo performance validation across its full operating envelope at the Galveston site, where Corsair testing is also continuing.
"We launched our first Marauder four weeks ago, and today we're putting another vessel in the water. This cadence is what our production model was built to deliver," Saronic co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Dino Mavrookas said.
Saronic raised $1.75 billion in Series D funding in April 2026 at a valuation of $9.25 billion. The funding is being used to expand its autonomous vessel portfolio and domestic shipbuilding infrastructure.
Last month, a U.S. Navy-operated Saronic Corsair rescued two U.S. Army aviators after their AH-64 Apache helicopter crashed off the coast of Oman. The operation was one of the first publicly disclosed uses of an uncrewed surface vessel in a search-and-rescue mission, beyond its routine surveillance and maritime security roles.
With the Mirage now in the water and another hull already under construction, Saronic is continuing production across its autonomous vessel portfolio from its Austin manufacturing facility.
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