Let’s say you just landed military forces near a contested waterway. The safest port is far away. And you need fuel. Fast.
A Baltimore manufacturer has a solution for that.
BlackSea Technologies is already churning out drone boats for the U.S. Navy. Soon, the firm will build underwater barges that can pump fuel through long hoses, delivering fuel to almost any beach.
The Navy awarded BlackSea a five-year, $256 million contract as part of its Seabased Petroleum Distribution System, the company said in a Wednesday news release.
It’s a big deal for the rapidly growing manufacturing and defense logistics firm, which largely operates out of a waterfront plant in an industrial area of South Baltimore. The company has a separate contract with the Navy worth up to $213 million to build drone boats.
BlackSea is a subsidiary of the Virginia-based private equity firm Razor’s Edge. In 2022, the firm bought a longtime Baltimore company called Maritime Applied Physics Co. and combined it with two related business to create BlackSea.
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The company quadrupled its workforce in Baltimore to about 235 as of last fall, and it has employees in Florida, North Carolina and California.
Under its new contract with the Navy, BlackSea said, it will build five underwater fuel delivery systems, with most of the production taking place in Baltimore.
BlackSea demonstrated the technology last year at an operational test in Virginia.
The company’s signature product has been a 16-foot drone boat known as a global autonomous reconnaissance craft.
Reuters reported in March that the Navy was using GARCs made by BlackSea on patrols in the Middle East as part of the war in Iran.
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