Metal Shark Boats

Metal Shark builds aluminium and steel craft at two Louisiana shipyards, one at Jeanerette and one at Franklin, and it has delivered more than 2,000 vessels in a little over two decades. The customer list is heavily governmental. More than 500 boats have gone to the US Navy and around 600 to the US Coast Guard, with further hulls sold to allied forces through Foreign Military Sales. In January 2026 the autonomous maritime firm Magnet Defense acquired the company, pairing an established production yard with an unmanned platform business aimed at national security fleet work.

The catalogue is organised around hull forms rather than missions. Monohull pilothouse boats carry the Defiant name and run from 27 feet to 165 feet, center console craft are branded Fearless and Relentless, and the catamaran pilothouse line is Courageous. Riverine craft and rigid inflatable boats fill out the smaller end. The Coast Guard programmes are the ones that made the company's reputation. In 2012 Metal Shark won the contract to replace the service's fleet of about 470 Response Boat-Small craft with a design based on the 29 Defiant, a deal reported at around 192 million dollars, and it has since delivered 100 Trailerable Aids to Navigation Boats and taken an order for 90 Special Purpose Craft-Shallow Water. Navy work covers the 40 PB patrol boat fleet based on the 40 Defiant, Force Protection Boats in medium, large and small variants with a contract covering up to 80 of the medium version, Underwater Construction Tenders on the Courageous catamaran hull, and High Speed Maneuverable Surface Targets bought by the Navy and Air Force with a follow-on order of 350 units.

Unmanned work runs through Sharktech Autonomous Vessels, a wholly owned division launched in 2018. Sharktech developed autonomous craft for the Marine Corps Long Range Unmanned Surface Vessel effort, with Metal Shark also supplying crewed 40 Defiant support boats for the same programme, and the Coast Guard Research and Development Center evaluated a 29-foot Sharktech test boat fitted with autonomy software from Sea Machines.

The commercial and first responder side is a real business rather than a sideline. Fire departments buy purpose-built fireboats, harbour pilots buy pilot boats, and the yards build aluminium passenger ferries for operators along the coasts. Law enforcement agencies at state and municipal level are steady customers for the smaller patrol craft. Metal Shark also supports what it sells, running parts, service and training for fleets that in some cases now stretch back more than a decade. Aluminium construction is the common thread through all of it. The company cuts, welds and outfits its own hulls at both yards rather than subcontracting the structural work, which is what let a boat builder be treated as a credible asset by a defence firm buying production capacity rather than a design. Foreign Military Sales programmes have put its patrol craft with partner forces in the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa and Asia.