On July 18, 2025, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) released the first official footage of No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) USX-1 Defiant unmanned surface vessel (USV).
Four months after its launch, DARPA has released the first video of the NOMARS unmanned surface vessel (USV) operating at sea. The announcement also teases an upcoming milestone with a “coming soon” note, hinting at the next phase of this project.
“Our No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) Defiant USV is designed to operate for up to a year at sea without human intervention. In-water testing is preparing it for an extended at-sea demonstration of reliability and endurance. Stay tuned for more news soon!”
DARPA on social media
Serco launched the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s No Manning Required Ship program medium unmanned surface vessel prototype, USX-1 Defiant, at Nichols Brothers Boat Builders shipyard in March 2025. After launching, the USV executed sea trials.
The No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) program has built a ship designed to operate autonomously for long durations at sea – the first-of-its-kind unmanned surface vessel (USV), USX-1 Defiant. As of summer 2025, the 180′, 240-metric-ton lightship is undergoing in-water testing to prepare for an extended at-sea demonstration of reliability and endurance.
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. 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.
With scaled production, NOMARS has the potential to efficiently and cost-effectively deliver a distributed USV fleet.
Optimized voyage for mission efficiency
UK-based marine technology company Theyr Ltd showcased its flagship TVOS voyage optimization solution at the Combined Naval Event (CNE) 2025 in Farnborough. Originally developed for the commercial shipping industry, where it has demonstrated significant reductions in both operational costs and voyage durations, TVOS is a scalable platform that can also be adapted for manned and unmanned surface and subsurface vessels. Theyr’s solution played a key role as the strategic planner for DARPA’s NOMARS (No Manning Required Ship) project, where it is currently operational.
NOMARS also features FarSounder’s Argos FLS (Forward Looking Sonar) which was integrated into the vessel’s navigation suite to enhance situational awareness and support the ship’s real-time obstacle avoidance capabilities.
