Mount Maunganui defence technology firm Syos Aerospace has launched an uncrewed underwater drone, extending its portfolio into a fourth operating domain and giving the Bay of Plenty manufacturer a new product to sell to navies that already buy its aircraft, robotic ground vehicles and uncrewed surface boats.
The SU10 underwater drone was unveiled at the Combined Naval Event in the United Kingdom last week. It is designed for mine countermeasures, seabed inspection, harbour security, anti submarine work and protection of subsea cables and pipelines. The drone operates to 500 metres deep, carries a 10 kilogram modular payload and can run for four hours on its internal battery or indefinitely when tethered to surface power. Operators control it by satellite link.
Chief executive Samuel Vye told Marine Technology News the launch was about turning Syos into a one stop autonomy shop for navies. “The SU10 extends our portfolio undersea and strengthens Syos as a provider of affordable interoperable uncrewed capability across land, sea, air and now subsurface,” Vye said.
Syos is dual headquartered in Mount Maunganui and the United Kingdom, with most of its manufacturing carried out in the Bay of Plenty. It was founded in 2021 and had about 50 staff at Mount Maunganui in September last year. The company has since said it expects to triple that local headcount on the back of a wave of international defence orders.
The biggest of those came last year, when Syos won a 66.8 million pound contract with the British Ministry of Defence to supply drones for use in Ukraine. The order is worth about 152 million New Zealand dollars and is the largest single contract a New Zealand uncrewed systems company has ever signed.
Syos is also one of the firms shortlisted for the British Army’s Project NYX, a 100 million pound programme to develop autonomous drones that can fly alongside Apache attack helicopters. That contract, worth roughly 227 million New Zealand dollars, would be larger again if Syos can convert the shortlist place into a signed deal.
Closer to home, the New Zealand Defence Force has put Syos under contract to provide air, land and maritime drones for Army and Navy trials. The defence force has been gradually moving toward operating mixed crewed and uncrewed formations, and Syos sits at the centre of those experiments because of its multi domain product range.
The underwater drone fills the last big gap in that range. Syos already sells helicopter style logistics drones, amphibious ground vehicles and robotic surface boats. The SU10 means a single supplier can now offer a navy interconnected systems that work above, on and below the water.
The company arrived in the underwater market partly through its acquisition of Tauranga based Bay Dynamics, an established subsea drone builder that had been quietly servicing oil and gas customers for years. Earlier versions of the SU10 platform have already been used to survey and inspect oil and gas pipelines in New Zealand waters.
The civilian side of the business is not being left behind. Syos has signed an international research partnership to deploy SU10 drones in Antarctica from late this year, working on long range under ice mapping. That kind of mission has previously required ships and dedicated science platforms costing tens of millions of dollars per voyage.
Wider strategic interest in underwater drones has grown rapidly since a string of attacks and suspected sabotage on undersea cables in the Baltic and North seas. Syos previously sold its uncrewed surface vessels to the British government for cable protection work and described that as a fast growing line of business. The SU10 brings the same protection capability to the seabed itself, where a small drone can sit on station inspecting cable and pipeline assets for far less than the cost of using a crewed ship.
Syos was named Business of the Year at the 2026 Tauranga Business Awards earlier this year, also taking out the Innovation and International Trade categories. The company is one of a small but growing group of New Zealand defence technology firms, alongside Auckland satellite operator Rocket Lab and Christchurch space plane builder Dawn Aerospace, that are exporting hardware to allied militaries.
For Tauranga, the immediate prize from the SU10 launch is more jobs. Syos has indicated it wants to lift its Mount Maunganui workforce from 50 to about 150 over the next year and has been recruiting engineers, software developers, machinists and assemblers to keep up with international orders. Bay of Plenty economic development agency Priority One has named the company as one of the region’s standout high value manufacturing employers.
The next test is whether Syos can convert its UK pipeline of work into firm contracts. A signed Project NYX deal, on top of the existing Ukraine drone order, would push the company’s combined British defence book above 380 million New Zealand dollars and confirm Mount Maunganui as a serious export base for uncrewed systems.
What do you think, should New Zealand be doing more to grow companies like Syos Aerospace, or are we already punching above our weight in defence tech? Leave a comment below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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