Forgotten US Navy Drone Foreshadowed Ukraine’s Black Sea Success
in the wake of Ukraine’s accomplished strikes on the Russian Black Sea Fleet using low-cost, agile unmanned surface vessels (USVs), the global defense community has shifted focus to a domain once considered niche.
Yet, long before Kyiv’s sea drones earned battlefield credibility, a little-known American platform had already proven its potential – and was quietly buried.
Howard Hornsby, now in his seventies, was behind the OWL MK II – a modular unmanned surface vehicle developed in the late 1980s and tested extensively in the 1990s. Despite its early technical maturity, the OWL project faced institutional resistance from the U.S. Department of Defense.
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Developed beginning in 1984 under the name International Robotic systems, the unmanned surface vessel program later operated as Navtec Inc. starting in 1995.In 2004, the OWL platform was transferred to Global Secure Applications, LLC, a woman-owned company led by howard Hornsby’s wife, karen, as CEO. All growth was privately funded from the start, with the earliest OWL prototypes featuring modular architecture, autonomous control, and real-time ISR capability.
From 1995 to 1997, the OWL MK II operated under U.S. Navy DET 1 in Bahrain, conducting harbor protection, minehunting, littoral anti-submarine warfare (ASW), and covert surveillance. It integrated easily with existing naval vessels and could be deployed by air, launched from small ships, or air-dropped. During FBE-Juliet 1997, a fleet battle experiment off San Diego, it demonstrated its capacity to outperform much larger and costlier systems in real-world conditions.
But success came at a cost. “We were told it was too advanced and low cost,” Hornsby saeid. “Upsetting a lot of high-dollar funded DOD programs and rice bowls.” A planned order for 15 units by NSWC/ONR – intended for deployment on U.S. Navy ships in the Gulf – was canceled just before the USS Cole attack. Hornsby was told the Department of Defense could not “give the impression publicly that we had any threats in the area.”