First Order Effects designs and builds sovereign-scale infrastructure for autonomous systems. The Austin, Texas company engineers forward-deployed, expeditionary equipment for autonomous ships, drones and robots, with hardware manufactured in the United States. Its engineering work spans autonomous maritime systems, autonomous surface vessels, ground stations and multi-megawatt power systems, with an emphasis on MOSA-compliant, vendor-agnostic open architecture.
Two product lines define its output. MESH Box is expeditionary hardware engineered in Austin and built in America to withstand salt, heat, transport loads and deployment conditions. SURGE systems are forward-deployed equipment and systems for the same autonomous platforms, built to field-readiness standards. Field readiness is the central engineering criterion at the firm: equipment is designed for conditions in which a second chance is not available.
Before founding the company, the founding team shipped autonomous vessels into Navy fleet production and closed a national communications gap in days. Members of the team have worked at SpaceX, Anduril, Saronic, Lockheed Skunk Works, Forterra and Fuse Energy. The firm serves defence, naval and maritime customers, as well as the drones, robotics and autonomous-systems-infrastructure sectors.
