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Rylan Hamilton

Rylan Hamilton

CEO & Co-Founder of Blue Water Autonomy, a Boston startup building autonomous ships for the U.S. Navy; previously co-founded 6 River Systems (sold to Shopify)

Oct 19, 2026

18:49
Payload, speed, endurance, and range.
18:53
We think about what are the most important things that we can carry for the Navy.
18:57
And so we can carry and fire missiles, we can carry radar systems, we can carry systems to go basically find and hunt down submarines, we can carry supplies for logistics.
19:07
And then speed's a big one for the Navy.
19:09
Like it's a big difference if you can go 15 knots or 30 knots.
19:13
Endurance, we built it so it can be out at sea for months at a time without intervention.
19:19
When we think about range, we want to make sure that can travel across the open oceans and it has enough fuel on board.

12 MINS LATER

31:24
Navy first, commercial later.
45:59
How much is the time now to be making automated ships suddenly far more prevalent when we've got U.S.-China tensions?
46:08
The time is definitely now.
46:09
If we hear the current administration, they're talking about shipbuilding, shipbuilding, and shipbuilding.
46:14
And we're designing and building autonomous ships.
46:16
And when you make them autonomous, you can remove the bridge, the berthing, the galley, the showers.
46:22
So you can make them a lot smaller.
46:23
And because they're smaller, you don't have to build them at the big Navy shipyards.
46:38
Why is now the right time from a technology perspective as well? What is going into making automation far more easy or certainly not easy, but far more able to enact right now?

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