Saronic has selected Brownsville, Texas as the site of a planned $3 billion shipyard the company calls Port Alpha, a facility designed to scale U.S. production of autonomous vessels. Construction is expected to begin later this year, with the yard opening in 2028 on an initial 835 acre footprint at the Port of Brownsville that can expand to nearly 4,400 acres.
The Austin based company said Port Alpha will be capable of building vessels up to 850 feet long at launch, with room to handle ships exceeding 1,200 feet in later phases. Saronic plans to lean on robotics, advanced manufacturing, and software driven production systems, and expects the site to create up to 10,000 direct jobs over the next decade across trades, engineering, and naval architecture.
The Brownsville pick follows a year long site search across the East, West, and Gulf coasts. Saronic cited the region's available workforce, deepwater access, and transportation infrastructure. The yard is the next step after the company's acquisition of Louisiana based Gulf Craft last year and its $250 million commitment to modernize that facility for production of the Marauder autonomous vessel.
The announcement lands days after Saronic's Corsair unmanned surface vessels made their combat debut in U.S. operations near the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. Central Command said three Corsairs struck a submarine and ship maintenance facility at Iran's Bandar Abbas Naval Base, which the military described as the first combat use of American sea drones. A Navy operated Corsair also rescued two U.S. Army aviators off Oman in June after their Apache helicopter went down.
The Port Alpha plan sits alongside the Trump administration's Maritime Action Plan and the proposed SHIPS for America Act, both aimed at reversing decades of decline in U.S. commercial shipbuilding. For owners, yards, and defense buyers, the project signals that autonomous vessel construction is moving from prototype orders into industrial scale capacity, and that Gulf coast yards are positioning to absorb the work.