Philadelphia, once considered the "workshop of the world," has hosted key shipbuilding sites since the 18th century. Held from March 27 to March 29, the Philly 250 Maritime Defense Hackathon helped bring maritime innovation back to the city.
Hosted by Albacore Inc., a defense-tech startup based in Philadelphia, the event aimed to bring students together for a "first of its kind maritime defense hackathon." Along with locally based teams, the hackathon drew students from universities in New York, Maryland, and as far as Ohio.
Hackathon judges—including founders, operators, and venture capital investors—outlined key problems student projects could help solve. Student teams then had 48 hours to build relevant hardware and software products.
One pressing issue is that the United States struggles to build military equipment as cheaply and efficiently as countries like Iran and China. Many hardware teams responded by focusing on affordable drone solutions, even including detailed pricing schemes in their presentations with costs broken down per bundle and per unit.
Analyzing vessel data also poses significant challenges. Ships broadcast their ID, location, and speed through Automatic Identification System (AIS) tracking. However, some vessels disable AIS to mask their identity, making them difficult to track. These "dark vessels" can pose serious national security risks. While they can be tracked using sensors and satellite imagery, this data is difficult to access in real time or from a distance.
Many teams focused on maritime issues in ongoing conflicts in Ukraine and the Persian Gulf. A large number of solutions centered on the Strait of Hormuz, which is particularly affected by the dark vessel problem. This is because many Iranian vessels do not broadcast AIS signals. The strait is also riddled with Iranian mines that militaries are working to deactivate, a complicated and inefficient process with limited systems in place to predict where Iran is likely to lay them.
Hackathon organizers sorted projects into three overarching categories: America's Shipbuilding Industrial Base, Autonomous Maritime Defense, and Maritime Domain Awareness and Interdiction. The first involved solutions expanding the United States' maritime technology capabilities. The second included unmanned vehicle solutions, such as autonomous boats and drones. The third encompassed sensing technology and data analytics software.
After the 48 hours of hacking concluded, teams presented their projects in the middle of the Armory. Some teams even demonstrated their hardware through waterside demos on the Schuylkill River—nodding to Philadelphia's shipbuilding past.
Team Highlights
Purdue National Defense Society
A USV capable of launching an aerial drone designed to sense and engage enemy vessels.
University of Pennsylvania: Man Overboard
An aerial drone with heat-sensing capabilities built to reduce response times for man overboard incidents.
Code & Coffee Philly: MOANA
An AI-powered buoy system that detects dark ships using vessel classification to navigate the limitations of AIS data.
Winners
After each team presented, judges selected a winner for each category and an overall competition winner.
Seawatch, developed by a team from Duke University, won the Shipbuilding category. Each cone-shaped buoy would form a sensor network capable of detecting maritime activity in any body of water, from the Strait of Hormuz to the Black Sea.
Priest, a compact "first to last mile" drone developed by a Harvard University team, won the Autonomous Defense category. Costing approximately $430 per unit, the project aims to address drone range limitations in Ukraine.
Minesweeper, a program that forecasts Iranian mine locations in the Strait of Hormuz, won both the Maritime Domain Awareness category and the overall competition.
The event concluded with a closing address from Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker, who spoke about the city's shipbuilding legacy in neighborhoods like the Navy Yard and the Bellevue District. Her remarks were a fitting close to the weekend that drew engineering talent from across the country to produce solutions to ongoing defense issues.
The Philly 250 Maritime Defense Hackathon signaled that Philadelphia's maritime capabilities still have potential to grow.