ACUA at DSEI

By Izzy Taylor, Astromarine

DSEI 2025 marked some significant milestones for us at ACUA, and we are still buzzing with follow ups and the potential for new demonstration opportunities. 

Just 2 years ago we attended DSEI 2023 as delegates, discovering more about how the defence and security sector could benefit from payload-oriented uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) and refining our niche within the market. 

This year we returned with our Pioneer USV and remote operations centre, having brought the ideas and requirements of the sector through our designs into the real thing, showcasing our capability and solidifying our place as a supplier. A full circle of feedback. 

Thank you so much to everyone who has supported us along the way from idea to implementation.

Anyway, some highlights from the 2025 event for us:

⚓️ Pioneer’s first trip to London. Despite the threat of a storm getting in the way, our operations team navigated the coastal trip from Plymouth to the Excel in London seamlessly. She arrived at the event piloted by Simon Chapman and quickly became our base for meeting customers when the sun was shining!

Video from CobraEmergencyon X.com

⚓️ Partnerships and collaborations. It is so exciting to see the scaling trend within this sector and beyond of collaboration rather than competition to deliver a better service or solution to customers and end users. It also makes procurement an easier task when an end-to-end solution is packaged for the customer, which is an all-round winner.

For us, collaboration is across the whole journey – from the supply chain for the vessel itself through to the specific payload and ongoing services our customers require.

⚓️ UK and international delegations. In just 3 days we hosted over 60 pre-booked meetings at our stand and tours of Pioneer, including 6 international navy delegations. During these, we showed the multitude of payload opportunities Pioneer is capable of, and real world data in our dockside operations centre.

⚓️ News and announcements during the week:

📣 The announcement of our recent 24-hour operation powered by hydrogen reached the BBC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckgzm0xr909o

📣 Serco and ACUA Ocean announced a strategic partnership for uncrewed maritime solutions.

📣 ACUA Ocean and @Systems, Engineering and Assessment Ltd signed an MoU to explore the deployment of integrated ASW and ISR capabilities using USVs

📣 A Serco-led consortium, including ACUA, was announced to develop autonomous ASW for the @Royal Navy.

Demonstrate with us

We are currently scheduling a range of payload capability demonstrations with Pioneer throughout the coming months. If you would like to be part of these, to discuss partnering, or to utilise Pioneer’s stable platform for your deployments, please get in touch with the team directly or email info@ocean.tech. 

What’s next for ACUA

Following DSEI, Pioneer headed to HMS President ready for ACUA’s London International Shipping Week event with MarRI-UK at St Katharine Docks. Find out more about that here: https://www.ocean.tech/post/london-international-shipping-week