The Anchorage Address
An Alaska Native-owned firm just won a $24.96M Navy contract for autonomous stealth boats. They will be built in Oregon.
The deck
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The story
ReconCraft is Alaska-incorporated, Anchorage-based, and Native-owned. On July 8 the Navy handed it $24,960,408, sole source, for autonomous low-profile vessels, boats that barely break the surface.
The Navy did not compete it. It went sole source through the SBA 8(a) program, built to route federal contracts to Native-owned firms. The boats will be welded in Clackamas, Oregon.
So what is "Alaska" in this boom? An ownership stake and an address, not a shipyard. A real Native win, and most of what Alaska's slice looks like now.
Swipe through how one Anchorage-owned, Oregon-built contract splits Alaska's paper from its steel.
If the firm is Native-owned but the boats are built Outside, does the win count as Alaska's?
What we verified
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Naval Sea Systems Command awarded ReconCraft LLC, Anchorage, Alaska, a $24,960,408 firm-fixed-price contract for autonomous low-profile vessels.
Current ALPVs operate with no onboard personnel using remote control and waypoint navigation, with provisions for enhanced autonomous capability in the future; the Defense Innovation Unit wants them to navigate autonomously in congested waters and when communications and GPS are denied.
ReconCraft has a track record of Navy special-operations and patrol craft, including a 2023 contract worth about $35.9 million for a dozen 40-foot patrol boats and a role in a combined $290 million patrol-boat award alongside Louisiana-based Metal Shark for the Navy's Naval Expeditionary Combat Command.
Trade and general reporting placed the award one day after Iran fired missiles at a third commercial ship in the Strait of Hormuz, framing the timing against renewed maritime-security pressure (context only, not central to the Alaska story).
The award was announced in the Department's July 8, 2026 contracts list; the contract number is N00024-26-C-6324.
Work will be performed in Clackamas, Oregon, and is expected to be completed by November 2028.
The contract was not competitively procured, in accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation 19.805-1(b)(2), the sole-source authority under the SBA 8(a) Business Development program.
The award is funded from the Navy's fiscal 2026 account for accelerated procurement and fielding of innovative technologies; the full $24,960,408 was obligated at award and expires at the end of the current fiscal year.
ReconCraft LLC is incorporated in Alaska and headquartered in Anchorage, and holds SBA 8(a) certification and Native American / tribally-owned small-business status.
ReconCraft's manufacturing facility is in Clackamas, Oregon; the company's own website lists its address as 9891 SE Mather Rd., Clackamas, OR 97015 and says it builds vessels up to 120 feet, 'Proudly Manufactured in the USA.'
An autonomous low-profile vessel (ALPV) is an uncrewed, semi-submersible craft whose configuration was influenced by narco-submarines; it rides low with most of the structure submerged to minimize radar, sonar, visual and infrared detection.
ALPV class figures (a documented program design), about 19.75 meters (roughly 65 feet) long, less than 0.61 meters of freeboard at operating displacement, payload roughly 2,000 to 4,627 kilograms, and an operational range near 2,200 nautical miles at about 8 knots.
Beats
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