Meet the Wave Glider, the Pentagon’s secret sea drone

In 2003, Joe Rizzi had a rich man’s dilemma. He’d often swim in the ocean outside his home on the coast of Hawaii’s Big Island and hear humpback whales singing in the ocean. He loved the sound, and wanted to hear it while he was at home looking out at the ocean. So, with the help of a neighbor, he crafted a flotation device from a kayak, a pickle jar, a long cable, and a hydrophone to live-stream the haunting songs into his living room speakers.

That device was an early prototype of the Wave Glider, a programmable surfboard that was later perfected in a bathtub by Liquid Robotics co-founder and CTO Roger Hine. Today’s version is outfitted with customizable sensors and floats along the water’s surface collecting information, guided by a patented rudder/thruster hybrid that harnesses wave power for propulsion. After Hine successfully tested a finished version of his invention off the Kona coast of Hawaii, a nearby Naval base caught wind of his project and thought it could be useful for missions.

“They said, ‘Do you have any idea how much money the Navy has spent in the last 40 years trying to build something that could operate independently out in the water?’” Rizzi told Yahoo News. “The next thing we know we had admirals flying out from the Pentagon to jump in the water and see how this thing operated.”


Ten years later, what started as a hobby is now the centerpiece of the world’s go-to water drone supplier — used by oil companies and scientists and, most notably, in classified missions for the Department of Defense.

The latest version of the Wave Glider, dubbed the SV3, during a beta test run in Hawaii. The company has a test facility there. (Photo: Liquid Robotics)

Liquid Robotics is one of the many Silicon Valley startups being tapped by the Pentagon in its scramble to stay on the cutting edge of innovation. Earlier this year, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Stephen Welby dropped by its Sunnyvale headquarters while on a tour of Silicon Valley startups. And just last week, both the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon announced that they would open satellite offices in the Bay Area.

Both agencies hope that being present in the nation’s unofficial tech capital will allow them to strengthen the government’s relationships with tech companies and, as DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said at a San Francisco conference last week, “convince some of the talented workforce here in Silicon Valley to come to Washington.” Specifically, the Pentagon plans for its office — due to open next month in Moffett Field — to function somewhat like a venture capital firm, funding promising startups in the areas of security and surveillance.

Among the 3D printing, big data and machine learning companies these agencies plan to target, Liquid Robotics serves an overlooked need to monitor sometimes nefarious activities that take place in murky ocean waters. On land, surveillance cameras are everywhere — on the outside of buildings and the smartphones of most bystanders. But as last year’s disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 proved, the same does not apply in the oceans. When something happens in the middle of the sea — whether it’s a plane crash, an oil spill or a drug deal — chances are no one will be watching.