REGENT completes first flight of Squire, its autonomous Seaglider built for defense missions

REGENT has com­plet­ed the suc­cess­ful ground-effect flight of Squire, its autonomous Seaglid­er drone built for defense mis­sions.

This mile­stone rep­re­sents the first time a defense-spe­cif­ic wing-in-ground effect (WIG) craft has flown in the Unit­ed States. The flight demon­stra­tion also marks the lat­est achieve­ment in REGENT’s ongo­ing Squire test cam­paign and under­scores the company’s delib­er­ate pri­or­i­ti­za­tion of the plat­form in response to urgent defense needs.

REGENT is advanc­ing Squire and oth­er defense-spe­cif­ic Seaglid­er ves­sels to sup­port the U.S. and its allies with mod­ern mar­itime capa­bil­i­ties as they address the grow­ing threat posed by Chi­na in the Indo-Pacif­ic.  

Bil­ly Thal­heimer, co-founder and CEO of REGENT, said: “This suc­cess­ful flight mile­stone is a major suc­cess for our defense pro­gram and a strong sig­nal of what Seaglid­er tech­nol­o­gy can deliv­er for the warfight­er. There are no prod­ucts in the mar­ket today that com­bine the speed and wave tol­er­ance of Squire at such a com­pelling price point. This will rev­o­lu­tion­ize mar­itime war­fare.”  

Fight­ing Edge for Mar­itime Defense  

Seaglid­er ves­sels are wing-in-ground (WIG) craft that fly on an aero­dy­nam­i­cal­ly effi­cient cush­ion of air with­in a wingspan of the sur­face of the water, enabling effi­cient, long-range per­for­mance that is below line-of-sight radar.

With speeds up to 70 knots (81 mph), a planned oper­a­tional range of more than 100 nau­ti­cal miles, and a 50-pound pay­load, Squire can enable crit­i­cal defense mis­sions includ­ing intel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance, and recon­nais­sance (ISR); tai­lored logis­tics; search and res­cue; and anti-sub­ma­rine war­fare.   

Tom Hunt­ley, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er of REGENT Defense, added: “Defense cus­tomers require plat­forms that can oper­ate across wide mar­itime areas with speed, range, and mis­sion flex­i­bil­i­ty, with­out rely­ing on tra­di­tion­al and often vul­ner­a­ble infra­struc­ture.

“Squire is designed to meet that exact need. This demon­stra­tion shows real progress toward deliv­er­ing a high-speed autonomous capa­bil­i­ty for mis­sions such as ISR, tai­lored logis­tics, and anti-sub­ma­rine war­fare.”  

Ear­li­er this year, REGENT lead­er­ship pre­sent­ed Squire to Sec­re­tary of War Pete Hegseth and exec­u­tive staff, out­lin­ing how Seaglid­er ves­sels can sup­port a range of crit­i­cal mis­sions for the warfight­er.

Dur­ing that dis­cus­sion, Hegseth empha­sized the urgent need to close oper­a­tional gaps in areas such as con­test­ed logis­tics and high­light­ed the impor­tance of emerg­ing defense com­pa­nies like REGENT mov­ing with speed to deliv­er mis­sion-ready capa­bil­i­ties to the field.  

Expan­sive Seaglid­er Test Cam­paign   

In par­al­lel with Squire’s devel­op­ment, REGENT is cur­rent­ly con­duct­ing sea tri­als of its 12-pas­sen­ger Viceroy Seaglid­er pro­to­type in Rhode Island, advanc­ing both its com­mer­cial and defense pro­grams through con­tin­u­ous real-world test­ing. REGENT has a glob­al com­mer­cial back­log of more than $10 bil­lion and a $15 mil­lion con­tract with the U.S. Marine Corps.  

Since the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. reg­u­la­tor for Seaglid­er ves­sels, cleared Squire for test­ing last year, REGENT has been val­i­dat­ing sys­tems, con­trols, and oper­a­tional envelopes step by step.

Mov­ing for­ward, REGENT will con­tin­ue to expand Squire per­for­mance, auton­o­my, and oper­a­tional capa­bil­i­ties for mis­sion-ready mar­itime oper­a­tions.