NO ONE WILL MISS RUM, BUGGERY AND THE LASH:

When 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 under­water craft use computer-controlled collision avoidance programs, Sea Hunter was designed to achieve an even higher level of self-control--a challenge not unlike 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 follow 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.

Some of the largest savings achieved by unmanned vessels come from long missions. Sea Hunter could remain at sea for weeks, voyaging from California to Hawaii and back almost twice without returning to base. The fiberglass hulled boat isn't meant for the front lines of battle but could serve as a prototype for future autonomous ships built with a variety of materials and missions in mind.

 

I 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 dollar." 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."

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