German firm builds self-operating naval drone hangar

A German autonomous systems company has demonstrated what it claims is the world’s first fully automatic drone launch and recovery system capable of operating from a moving vessel without any human intervention, and unveiled the commercial product at the Combined Naval Event in Farnborough, United Kingdom.

CiS, a European developer of autonomous aerial systems, announced the ORKA Dock, a self-contained hangar that allows its ORKA surveillance drone to take off, complete its mission, return to the vessel, land, and recharge entirely on its own, whether the host platform is underway, pitching in waves, or sailing at up to 15 knots.

The capability was not just a trade show concept when CiS took to the stage in Farnborough. The company had already put the ORKA Dock through two weeks of live operational testing aboard a moving uncrewed surface vessel during SeaSEC 2026, an international naval security exercise held in Rostock, Germany in April 2026, according to the company’s announcement.

The system was integrated on the back deck of the Q-RECON 24, a high-speed long-range uncrewed surface vessel built by FLANQ, the German maritime defense solutions provider that CiS established a strategic partnership with in September 2025. Operating daily across missions ranging from offshore energy asset protection to harbor security, the ORKA Dock completed automatic launch and recovery cycles while the Q-RECON 24 was underway, validating what CiS calls its Precision Landing System, a proprietary guidance technology that enables the drone to recover autonomously onto a surface that is simultaneously moving forward and pitching with wave action.

The ORKA drone itself is CiS’s long-range tactical surveillance platform, designed for aerial reconnaissance and inspection over both land and water. The company describes it as delivering 75 minutes of endurance with a 5-kilogram mission payload capacity, per the press release, giving operators persistent aerial coverage across a wide operational area from a single deployment. When housed in the ORKA Dock, the system becomes self-sustaining: the dock handles fast recharging, includes an optional tether capability for extended endurance operations where the drone stays connected to the vessel’s power supply, and carries battery backup to ensure it can operate even if the host platform loses main power. The system can open and execute a launch in under 30 seconds, per CiS’s announcement, which matters in scenarios where surveillance gaps need to be closed quickly in response to emerging threats.

The FLANQ Q-RECON 24 that served as the demonstration host at SeaSEC is the larger sibling of FLANQ’s Q-RECON family. FLANQ, a German maritime defense specialist, unveiled the base Q-RECON platform in May 2025 as a two-meter-long, two-person-portable USV designed for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and tactical interdiction, with burst speeds of up to 30 knots and a 30-kilogram internal payload bay, according to reporting by Marine Technology News at the time of the initial launch. The Q-RECON 24 referenced in the ORKA Dock demonstration is a larger, higher-speed, longer-range variant of that platform. CiS and FLANQ announced their strategic partnership in September 2025 following successful open-water trials where an ORKA drone was hosted, deployed, and recovered aboard a FLANQ USV, according to Naval Today’s reporting on the partnership announcement.

The operational significance of this combination extends well beyond what either system accomplishes individually. An uncrewed surface vessel carrying a drone that can launch and recover autonomously is, in practical terms, a floating persistent ISR platform that requires no crew for either the surface or aerial component of the mission. Navies, coast guards, and maritime security agencies operating such a system can deploy it to patrol offshore energy infrastructure, monitor harbor approaches, track suspicious vessels, or screen a naval task force’s flanks without committing personnel to a dedicated ship. The drone extends the surface vessel’s sensing range by several times; the automated dock removes the logistical dependency on weather windows and available crew to manage aircraft operations.

CiS CEO Tom Kaufman described the SeaSEC exercise results directly: “Achieving fully autonomous launch and recovery from a moving USV in a live exercise environment — without any operator intervention — is something that has never been done before. We believe it to be a world first. The ORKA and ORKA Dock, working collaboratively with FLANQ USVs, give navies, coast guards, and maritime security operators the persistent aerial capability they need, deployable from virtually any surface asset.” The world-first claim is the company’s own assertion rather than an independently verified benchmark, but the SeaSEC exercise provides documented operational evidence that the system performed the described capability under real conditions.

The ORKA Dock is described as designed and built in Germany using sovereign components, a phrase that carries specific weight in the current European defense procurement environment where supply chain independence has become a policy priority across NATO member states. CiS says the system is compatible with ships, uncrewed surface vessels, land vehicles, and expeditionary sites, meaning the same dock hardware can theoretically serve multiple host platform types without modification, which simplifies logistics for customers operating mixed fleets. The company has confirmed it is moving into full-scale production following the SeaSEC validation.