U.S. Army Tests Unmanned Surface Vessels to Protect Logistics Ship in Philippine Waters.

U.S. Army soldiers tested and fielded unmanned surface vessels during Exercise Salaknib 2026 in the Philippines, with DVIDS imagery posted on June 17 showing the 25th Infantry Division adding autonomous maritime sensors to an Army-led littoral security mission. The deployment matters because it extends reconnaissance and port-protection coverage while reducing the need to place soldiers on manned patrol boats.

The vessels were also used in Casiguran Sound to screen a U.S. Army logistics ship carrying Philippine Army armored vehicles and personnel over a 260-mile route. That mission shows how small unmanned systems can strengthen convoy security, improve coastal surveillance, and support distributed operations across the Indo-Pacific.

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U.S. Army soldiers from the 25th Infantry Division tested unmanned surface vessels at Naval Base Camilo Osias in the Philippines during Exercise Salaknib 2026, demonstrating how small autonomous boats can support coastal surveillance, port security, and logistics protection in an archipelagic operating environment (Picture source: Army Recognition Group).

The Army caption does not name the vessel model, so the system should be described first as an unmanned surface vessel rather than overstated as a confirmed variant. However, the Philippine context is consistent with the MARTAC MANTAS T-12 unmanned surface vessels already supplied to the Philippines through U.S. foreign military financing and publicly identified by the Pentagon in November 2024 as a capability intended for operations across the Philippine exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea. Naval News has reported that the U.S. transfer included four MANTAS T-12 unmanned surface vessels and a larger Devil Ray T-38 unmanned surface vessel, with training support tied to Philippine maritime domain awareness requirements.

The armament question is important because these boats are not small missile craft, patrol boats, or gun-armed interceptors. No visible gun mount, missile rail, rocket launcher, or loitering-munition fixture appears in the publicly released Salaknib imagery, and the operational value of the vessel lies primarily in sensing, networking, and distributed coverage. For a T-12-type craft, the “combat load” is best understood as modular mission equipment: electro-optical and infrared cameras, communications terminals, electronic surveillance equipment, sonar or mine-countermeasure payloads, and onboard autonomy packages. In practical terms, the boat does not destroy a target by itself; it helps locate, classify, track, and report contacts so that a command post, coastal unit, aircraft, patrol craft, artillery battery, or missile unit can act on better data.

The technical baseline for the MANTAS T-12 helps explain why the U.S. Army is experimenting with it in the Philippines. The commercially listed vessel is 3.6 meters long, has a payload capacity of about 64 kg, uses an electric twin-screw powertrain, can exceed 30 knots in burst speed, cruises above 12 knots, and is advertised with a range above 100 nautical miles depending on configuration and mission profile. Its carbon-fiber catamaran hull provides a shallow draft and low visual signature relative to crewed patrol boats, while redundant communications and modular line-replaceable components make it suitable for field use by small detachments rather than only by naval technicians.

Operationally, the Salaknib mission is less about testing a single drone boat and more about evaluating whether Army intelligence and electronic-warfare units can run a maritime screen as part of a land force scheme of maneuver. In Casiguran Sound, the unmanned vessels reportedly spread across a perimeter as the Logistics Support Vessel approached port, transmitting information to personnel ashore in near real time; one soldier described the boats as escorting the LSV from about six miles out. That is a relevant distance in an archipelagic environment because the threat is often not a major surface combatant but an unidentified fast craft, a surveillance boat, a civilian vessel masking hostile intent, or a small unmanned system approaching a beach, pier, fuel point, or logistics ship.

Tactically, a swarm of small unmanned vessels changes the geometry of local security. A manned patrol boat searches sequentially, while a group of autonomous boats can hold separate sectors, maintain spacing, and create a moving sensor line ahead of a transport vessel or around a port entrance. The useful output is not only video; it is time. Earlier detection gives commanders more time to change a landing point, hold a logistics ship outside a vulnerable channel, cue an aerial sensor, warn a Philippine coastal unit, or prepare a non-kinetic response such as electronic monitoring. This is where the 125th Intelligence and Electronic Warfare Battalion’s involvement matters: the unit’s role is to turn raw signals, imagery, and position data into decision-quality information for commanders ashore.

Naval Base Camilo Osias also gives the exercise a specific strategic setting. The base, located in Santa Ana, Cagayan, was one of four additional Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement sites announced by the United States and the Philippines in April 2023, alongside Lal-lo Airport, Camp Melchor Dela Cruz, and Balabac Island. Cagayan faces the Luzon Strait and the waters between northern Luzon and Taiwan, while Balabac is oriented toward the South China Sea; together, these sites support a dispersed posture for logistics, sensing, and crisis response. The significance is that an Army division is practicing maritime security tasks that directly affect ground-force movement, port access, and sustainment under contested conditions.

The capability still has limits that should not be ignored. Small electric unmanned surface vessels can be affected by sea state, battery endurance, communications loss, jamming, capture, small-arms fire, and cyber intrusion. Their tactical usefulness depends on how quickly sensor data reaches a command node and whether that node is connected to forces able to respond. The Salaknib 2026 activity therefore should be read as a field evaluation of the command-and-control chain as much as a boat demonstration. It fits a broader U.S.-Philippine pattern: relatively small unmanned systems are being used to widen coverage, reduce risk to personnel, and complicate an opponent’s reconnaissance and interdiction planning without requiring the Philippines or the U.S. Army to deploy larger crewed vessels for every local security task.

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Written by Evan Lerouvillois, Defense Analyst.

Evan studied International Relations, and quickly specialized in defense and security. He is particularly interested in the influence of the defense sector on global geopolitics, and analyzes how technological innovations in defense, arms export contracts, and military strategies influence the international geopolitical scene.