Affairs: Defence / Rhode Island
Bay watch
The Ocean State has become a hub for defence businesses that are helping to lift its economy out of the red and into the blue.
Wind tunnel at the Naval Undersea Warfare Centre
Drones are trialled at sea from Rhode Island
It’s a choppy day in Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island, as a pair of rocket-shaped drones skip over the swell. They stop abruptly, noses pointed skyward in the dark water, awaiting a signal to dive into the deep. “You just throw these boys in the surf and off they go,” says Ian Estaphan Owen, a Welshman who served in the UK’s Royal Navy and worked for US defence manufacturers Raytheon Technologies and Lockheed Martin before co-founding Jaia Robotics in Dece…
