Sea Serpent USV ready for orders after successful Saudi Arabia delivery and sea trials
By Larry Claasen
IT has been a long road for Eddie Noble. The founder of Noble Concentric Solutions first started exploring unmanned vessels back in 2012, after watching the fruitless search for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.
At the time, Ocean Infinity, the company conducting the search, was looking to use 16 underwater vessels with sonars to detect the plane wreckage. Ocean Infinity approached a Cape Town company Noble was working for at the time to develop remote control and unmanned vessels but technology to develop them was not ready.
A few years later, Noble decided to flesh out the idea, and at the Africa Aerospace and Defence Expo, he met with a Saudi Arabian delegation that was interested in the concept.
The Saudis initially thought the price to develop and build the vessel was too high but after seeing the effectiveness of the use of drones in the war in Ukraine, he approached them to see if they were still interested.
They were, and the same Saudi client eventually took delivery of the first Sea Serpent in October 2026. “We did all the sea trials and the tests, everything in South Africa, in Port Elizabeth. Of course, it was built by a shipyard there called Legacy Marine, a very good yard.”
The Sea Serpent operates at what the International Maritime Organisation classifies as Level Four autonomy — the highest tier, where the vessel effectively thinks for itself.
“The boat will do everything in terms of the law, the collision avoidance and all of that, the rules, we call rules of the road,” Noble explained.
That does not mean there is no human involved. “There is still somebody watching it,” he said, sitting at a ground control station. But the boat handles navigation, obstacle avoidance and compliance with international maritime rules on its own.
The business case for an unmanned vessel over a crewed one is stark. Noble draws a direct comparison to a 35 metre patrol boat used for oil and gas protection in Nigeria.
“That boat’s around $6,5 million. It’s got three very expensive, big engines. It’s using a lot of fuel. It’s got a crew of 23, which you have to pay for and feed all the time, versus a $1 million (R16,35 million) boat, which has one, maybe two smaller engines, and uses hardly any fuel. And you don’t have any of the food and crew.”
“This thing can sail around and do the exact same job for a fraction of the price,” he said.
For a basic surveillance model focused on port or border security, Noble puts the price between $600,000 and $800,000. “Just a boat with a camera system and that’s it,” he said.
While the Sea Serpent was born out of a security application, Noble sees a wide range of uses. “Search and rescue is a big one,” he said. “You’re not putting the people in the vessel.”
Firefighting, hydrographic work and port control are also on the list. “Illegal fishing is a big one,” Noble added.
“These boats can detect trawlers, and you can follow them. And with a very good camera system, you can record what they’re doing. And with their position information that they’re in our local waters, that’s legal information that you can take them to court and win.”
One of the technical breakthroughs for the Sea Serpent was solving the problem of beyond-line-of-sight communication. Radio works only as far as the eye can see. For over-the-horizon control, Noble turned to Starlink.
“I need 80 megabits,” he said. “I’ve got Starlink.” The system delivered speeds of around 340 megabits per second. “It was absolutely fantastic.”
Though Starlink still has to get a licence to operate in South Africa, Noble explained that he is using an international roaming licence, which means that “as long as it’s not in one place for longer than two months, it will continue working.”
