Posted on July 20, 2026
Peter Eavis and Nicholas Kulish
After its unmanned vessels recently drew attention in the Iran war, Saronic Technologies, a shipbuilding start-up, announced on Thursday that it would open a new facility in the United States to make both naval and commercial ships.
Saronic’s chief executive, Dino Mavrookas, said the company would break ground this year on an 850-acre shipyard in Brownsville, Texas, and begin building vessels there by 2028.
Last month, the U.S. military used a Saronic drone boat to rescue the two-person crew of a downed Apache attack helicopter off the coast of Oman. This week, three of its vessels were used to attack an Iranian naval installation, which U.S. Central Command said was the first time the military had employed drone boats in a combat operation.
Saronic has sought to emphasize its ability to bring products to market quickly, in contrast to large, established defense contractors. But building a major shipbuilding operation in the United States could prove tough.
Most large commercial ships are built in China, Japan and South Korea. President Trump and a bipartisan group of lawmakers in Congress want to resurrect commercial shipbuilding with subsidies and other measures, but their efforts have made little progress.
