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FORTUNE.COM // JUNE.1.19
and after docking at Pearl Harbor, Sea
Hunter completed the 10-day return trip
without incident.
Sea Hunter, it bears noting, is the first
autonomous ship to make an ocean cross-
ing and, remarkably, the first Navy ship
designed from scratch by Leidos.
Little known outside government
contracting circles, Leidos, then dubbed
Science Applications International Corp.
(SAIC), was founded 50 years ago by Robert
Beyster, a brilliant and entrepreneurial
physicist who had worked on the hydrogen
bomb at the Los Alamos National Labora-
tory. An avid sailor and a friend of yacht-
racing captain Dennis Conner, Beyster
tasked SAIC to develop software to model
improved hull designs after Conner’s squad
lost the America’s Cup to an Australian
team led by Alan Bond in 1983—the first
American loss in the race’s 132-year history.
Connor regained the Cup the following year.
That expertise came in handy on future
projects with the Navy but didn’t publicly
reemerge until 2012, when a $59 million
contract win to develop an autonomous
ship put the software front and center
once again. For Sea Hunter, the company
also drew on expertise gained from many
loosely related projects, including develop-
ing underwater sensors for the Navy, per-
forming coastline surveys for the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
and conducting A.I. work to process satel-
lite imagery.
That’s exactly the kind of eclectic mix of
tech-savvy competencies that have under-HE SWELLS in the middle of the
North Pacific were reaching nine
feet when one of two engines on
the diesel-powered U.S. naval
ship called Sea Hunter shut
down. About 1,500 nautical miles
from its home base in San Diego,
the 132-foot-long craft, which
had been cruising at 10 knots,
couldn’t send a member of its
crew to check out the problem—
because it didn’t have a crew.
Sea Hunter’s sleek, spiderlike silhouette, with a narrow hull
and two outriggers, is a prototype of what could be a new class of
autonomous warships for the U.S. Navy. Its artificial intelligence–
based controls and navigation system, designed by Leidos Hold-
ings, a defense contractor based in Reston, Va., were seven years
in the making. And this maiden voyage—a more than 4,000-mile
roundtrip to the giant Pearl Harbor naval station—was its first
major proof of concept.
Nothing like this had ever been attempted before. And while
the A.I. systems that keep the ship on course and help it avoid
collisions with other vessels were working exactly as advertised, a
glitch in its mechanical systems threatened to scuttle the trip—a
reminder to tech geeks that no matter how advanced the technol-
ogy, mundane mechanical problems can bring a project down.
A group of 14 support staff in a trailing escort ship sprang into
action. Keith Crabtree, a systems engineer with Leidos, and other
staff jumped into a rigid inflatable boat and zipped over to Sea
Hunter. Crabtree, who had helped put the ship through its paces in
the calmer waters of San Diego Bay, says he wasn’t worried about
the swells as he rode across the waves to Sea Hunter. The triple-
hulled design of the prototype, inspired by the Polynesian waka
canoe, offered a more stable perch than the bouncing journey
aboard the escort ship.
“We were in for a smoother ride than what we had been endur-
ing,” Crabtree recalls. A simple software fix corrected the problem,LENGTH
132 FEET
The boat is designed to test a
range of missions carried out
by medium-size craft, such
as tracking submarines with
towed arrays of sensors or
acting as a communications
relay equipped with long
antennas.TOP SPEED
27 KNOTS
Not as fast as some of the
Navy’s newest manned ships,
but speedy enough to keep up
with a sub. For some missions,
like clearing mines, speed is
less important than the fact
that the ship carries no crew.RANGE
10,000 NAUTICAL MILES
Some of the largest savings
achieved by unmanned ves-
sels come from long missions.
Sea Hunter could remain at
sea for weeks, voyaging from
California to Hawaii and back
almost twice without return-
ing to base.WEIGHT
135 TONS
The fiberglass hulled boat
isn’t meant for the front lines
of battle but could serve as a
prototype for future autono-
mous ships built with a variety
of materials and missions in
mind.NO HANDS ON DECK
The specs for the Navy’s Sea Hunter, and the expectations that surround it.