{"id":102410,"title":"AICE Power - Underwater drones for defense","tagline":"Modular subsea drone swarms for defense","body":"Hey everyone,\n\n**TLDR**: we are building a new generation of UUVs (Unmanned Underwater Vehicle) for defense of critical maritime infrastructure.\n\nThe evolution of modern battlefields shows the same pattern everywhere: highly expensive military systems are increasingly being challenged by agile, low-cost technologies produced at scale.\n\nIn Ukraine, cheap aerial drones have transformed warfare and forced entire defense doctrines to adapt. We think the same shift is about to happen underwater, and are obsessed with the question of what the “drone moment” for underwater warfare would look like.\n\nSo we started speaking with submariners, naval operators, ex-commandos, and defense engineers. The demand signal was much stronger than we expected, and the common need is always the same: **cost-effective** and highly **modular** underwater **vehicles** acting in **swarms** that can **adapt quickly** to operational requirements (speed, range, sonar equipment, payloads, etc.). Today, very few solutions exist.\n\nA couple of days after deciding to pivot, we wanted to move as fast as possible and get something real in the water before Demo Day. So we built our **first modular prototype within a week**. It already integrates the main subsystems and was designed to evolve quickly based on operator feedback and mission requirements. Here is a photo:\n\n![uploaded image](/media/?type=post\u0026id=102410\u0026key=user_uploads/3424825/4d4a7af2-8dcc-4dac-9ddd-037f9606cdba)\n\n**Our ask:**\n\nWould love to connect with people across the defense ecosystem - especially naval operators, submariners, maritime special operations, and teams working on subsea robotics, maritime autonomy, or distributed naval warfare across Europe, NATO, and allied countries.","slug":"Qdm-aice-power-underwater-drones-for-defense","created_at":"2026-06-02T13:13:02.084Z","updated_at":"2026-06-20T15:46:28.292Z","total_vote_count":9,"url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Qdm-aice-power-underwater-drones-for-defense","share_image_url":"//bookface-static.ycombinator.com/assets/ycdc/yc-og-image-c440a0ad1dacfb86eeeb343717479cc54d256614449b4ef719977a0a451f8bc8.png","company":{"id":31442,"name":"AICE","slug":"aice","url":"https://aicepower.com","logo":"https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/581bc66ce17e1873b4f5c5446cc221ea8275a118.png","batch":"Spring 2026","industry":"Industrials","tags":[],"search_path":"https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/31442"}}