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MARTAC outsources another 100 Devil Rays a year to a Florida luxury boat builder
SOLACE Boats builds luxury center consoles in Edgewater, Florida, and will now infuse Devil Ray hulls for MARTAC at 100 a year. It is MARTAC's second deal with a Florida boatbuilder since June.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- MARTAC said on September 15 that SOLACE Boats will add capacity for 100 more Devil Ray autonomous vessels a year, at a 200,000-square-foot plant in Edgewater, Florida, for U.S. and allied government demand.
- SOLACE's regular product is luxury center console boats between 28 and 42 feet, built with the vacuum infusion and catamaran-hull techniques MARTAC says complement its own.
- It is the second such deal this year: MARTAC announced co-production with Mystic Powerboats, a nearly 100,000-square-foot Florida carbon-fiber shop, on June 1, and called it the first of several.
- The Devil Ray T24 launched in 2023 and entered service with U.S. and allied forces, and can deploy smaller MANTAS T12 vessels as what MARTAC calls a marsupial mothership.
- MARTAC said it is using manufacturers with dual-use experience to cut lead time and capital constraints instead of building additional production capacity itself.
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Why it matters
- decision MARTAC now has to hold two independent boatyards to one hull standard, and a structural complaint from an operator gets fixed inside a building it does not own.
- constraint Without a published baseline output, a program office cannot turn 100 hulls a year into a delivery schedule or a growth rate, only into an absolute number of boats to plan around.
- capability Because the T24 takes MARTAC's autonomy without a platform redesign, the company can buy capacity from any yard able to infuse a strong lightweight hull.
- precedent Buyers should expect MARTAC's next production increase to come as a contract with another named yard, on that yard's floor space.
Vacuum infusion and catamaran hull work are the same trade whether the deck above carries fishing chairs or a payload bay. MARTAC CEO Tony Smeraglinolo said his company is proud to partner with SOLACE, pointing to the yard's reputation, in-depth experience and prowess in producing high-strength, lightweight hulls that can traverse high sea states [5].
He also said the deal "demonstrates MARTAC's ability to rapidly scale by harnessing the talent and capacity of world-class marine manufacturers in our region" [6].
Scale here has a rate attached. A hundred vessels a year is one hull every 3.65 days on the calendar, or one every two and a half days if the yard works 250 days [17]. MARTAC did not disclose its current Devil Ray output, so the 100 is an absolute number of boats [20].
The announcement puts the Edgewater plant at 200,000 square feet, which it gives as 4.59 acres [2]. SOLACE's website describes an operation covering 16 acres along the Intracoastal Waterway, so the building named in the deal is under a third of the site [15][19].
Hull work can leave MARTAC's own shop because the boat was designed for that. Autonomy stays in MARTAC's software. The hull goes to a yard that already builds hulls every week. The company said the Devil Ray T24 integrates its MantaFleet autonomy and collision-avoidance systems and can accommodate emerging AI capabilities without a platform redesign [13].
The announcement records two hull agreements with Florida boatbuilders in three and a half months [18]. Both are yards that already run production for their own customers [4][10].
Someone at MARTAC now owns the acceptance criteria that make an Edgewater hull behave like a Mystic hull in a high sea state. The press release does not quote that person.
For anyone qualifying a second source for a physical product, the split worth writing down is between the properties a customer tests and the supplier who controls them. Hull weight, sea-state handling and structural life belong to whichever yard infuses the laminate. Autonomy and collision avoidance belong to MARTAC [13]. MARTAC holds both yards to one drawing, and a hull complaint gets fixed on a line that is also building center consoles.
What to watch
- Whether MARTAC names the further domestic co-production partners it said in June it was finalizing.
- Whether MARTAC or a government customer publishes a hull acceptance standard covering boats built at more than one yard.
- Whether MARTAC ever discloses a baseline Devil Ray output that turns the added 100 a year into a rate.