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FORTUNE.COM // JUNE .1 .19
W
HEN IT WAS FIRST put in the water
in 2016, Sea Hunter was a slick
gray beast, fierce-looking and
intentionally tough to board.
The ship lacked not just the interior
amenities to house a crew, like sleeping
quarters, a galley, and bathrooms, but also
handrails along the sides and padding
on the deck for traction. The Navy, after
all, had asked for an autonomous ship
that could track enemy submarines and
resist boarders. But when the testers from
Leidos launched its very first trips along
the Columbia River in Oregon, it became
apparent that they needed to add handrails
and an anti-skid coating on the deck for
safer human boarding. There’s also a small,
bolted-on pilot’s cabin for shelter and some
metal rails for connecting gear. Cook, the
senior program manager, says some of the
additions make him cringe. “It’s like a roof
rack on a Corvette,” he says.
But without them, it would have been all
but impossible for the engineers to come
aboard and fix the engine two years later,
while tossing on the high seas. In under
an hour, Crabtree and the Navy engineers
restarted the craft, tracing the problem to
an easily corrected software setting.
While the airborne drones commonly
used by the military are piloted by remote
control, and some autonomous under-
water craft use computer-controlled
collision avoidance programs, Sea Hunter
was designed to achieve an even higher
level of self-control—a challenge not un-
like that designing autonomous vehicles.
Though sea traffic is nowhere near that of
highway driving, the stakes of an error are
significantly higher. And there are no road
signs, traffic lanes, or dividing lines for the
software to track. Cook, a self-described
“autonomy snob,” says, “I think a [self-
driving] car is easier.”
Leidos designed Sea Hunter to meet the
fundamental rules of human ship-to-ship
encounters, which require that a ship fol-
low different procedures depending on its
features and functions. Typically, one ship
is to stay on course and the other is to give
way. But the priorities differ for sailboats vs.
powerboats, the direction of the wind, and
many other criteria. Sea Hunter uses sensor
data from cameras and radar to assess any other craft it encounters
and properly choose the correct maneuver.
It was the Navy that sought the big test—an ocean crossing with
“no human hands on”—to prove that the concept of unmanned
vessels was ready for a much bigger push. After Sea Hunter passed
with flying colors, the Navy Department issued requests in April
for the design of truly combat-ready medium-size and large-size
(up to 300 feet long) unmanned surface vessels. Says Rear Adm.
Ronald Boxall, director of surface warfare for the Navy: “We’re
looking for a mix of ships that gives us the most lethality per dol-
lar.” Unmanned ships are “in a research and development phase
right now, but they could cross into an operational procurement
phase relatively quickly when we think we’re ready.”
For now, autonomous vessels are part of the Navy’s strategy to ad-
dress the twin threats of the expanding Russian and Chinese navies.
China is building a vast armada of surface and underwater craft as
it tries to win dominance in the Pacific. The Russian military doesn’t
have the same resources but is building a fleet of quieter and more
efficient subs that could sneak around the world to deliver conven-
tional or nuclear payloads. Sea Hunter, which carries no weapons, is
designed to monitor these fleets, as well as to clear mines and pro-
vide a secure communications relay for the Navy’s largest warships.
In December 2017, the Navy ordered a second Sea Hunter fromCOMPUTER-NERD CEO
Krone, an engineer by
training, began his
career writing programs
on IBM punch cards.