A Line in Troubled Waters

Somewhere between the open sea and the ship deck lies a challenge navies often overlook. For decades, launching small boats from larger ships involved cranes, cables, and crew. Recovery was relatively easy – just toss a rope and haul it back. But that only worked when someone was onboard to catch and connect the lines.
Today, unmanned surface vessels (USVs) have an important part in rethinking the rules of naval warfare. But one question remains: how do you recover a boat when there’s no crew onboard to connect the lines?
It’s the kind of operational need, highly technical challenge that often goes unnoticed. For Amitai, a former Israeli Navy boats operator and marine robotics expert, it became a personal mission. “I realized early on that all the innovation focused on the USVs themselves,” he says. “Usually not into consideration about how they’d be launched and recovered – especially not autonomously.”

In 2018, Amitai founded Sealartec – a company focused entirely on one usually overlooked piece of the unmanned maritime puzzle: launch and recovery systems (LARS) for USVs. “It’s our main business,” he says. “And it’s where we’re making the biggest difference.”

The Missing Link in the Maritime Chain

Recovering an unmanned vessel from open water sounds simple – until you factor in the energy of the sea. “Waves don’t come in straight lines. The motion of the sea is random and unpredictable,” Amitai explains. “You’re trying to connect two moving platforms, sometimes at high speed, with no one onboard to help.”
That’s where Sealartec’s patented bow-capture system comes in – an autonomous solution that uses local positioning, onboard sensors, and smart algorithms to locate, identify, and physically connect with returning USVs. “We’ve developed a sensing system that can track a vessel’s position in real time and execute a safe capture – even in rough seas,” says Amitai. “It’s a complex task, even for humans. We’ve made it autonomous.”
And the system is modular – it can be installed on a wide range of platforms without major redesign. “That was key for us,” he adds. “We didn’t want navies or commercial operators to need a custom ship just to recover their USVs or UUVs.”

From Navy Niche to Global Need

Sealartec didn’t follow the typical startup path. After early trials at the Technion and the development of a full-scale prototype, the company joined Elbit Systems’ INCUBIT accelerator – an initiative supported by Israel’s Innovation Authority to help dual-use technologies evolve into real-world systems.
The partnership proved pivotal. “INCUBIT gave us the structure to move from a prototype to a field-tested solution,” says Amitai. By 2020, Sealartec had demonstrated its system in operational sea states – proving that what worked in theory could succeed in real conditions, with real vessels.
Interest in USVs is accelerating – driven also by recent conflicts. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy is studying how swarms of unmanned vessels could counter future global threats.
“These aren’t future scenarios,” Amitai says. “They’re happening now. And every one of those vessels still needs a way home.”
 

Sails Under the Radar Until It’s Needed

True autonomy means closing the loop. “If you can launch a vessel but need a human to recover it, then it’s not truly autonomous,” says Amitai.
In their latest project, Sealartec aims to enable the recovery of a smaller robotic craft launched directly from a USV – essentially layering autonomy on autonomy. It’s a glimpse of what’s next: unmanned vessels deploying and retrieving other unmanned systems, all without human contact.
“We’re not a defense company,” Amitai clarifies. “We’re a technology company born out of INCUBIT, solving a real-world, technical problem that impacts every USV operator – military or civilian.”
As the maritime world catches up with the autonomous advances already standard in air and land domains, Sealartec is ensuring no vessel gets left behind – even when there’s no one there to bring it home.