北太平洋中部的海浪達到9英尺，美國海軍艦艇海上獵人號（Sea Hunter）上的兩臺發動機有一臺突然熄火。這艘艦艇的長度為132英尺，正在以10節的速度巡航，距離圣迭戈的基地約1500海里，但無法派人檢查問題，因為船上并沒有船員。

海上獵人號線條流暢，輪廓有點像蜘蛛，船身狹窄，配有雙側體，這款原型艦可能成為美國海軍主力無人軍艦。艦上搭載的人工智能控制和導航系統由國防承包商萊多斯控股公司（Leidos Holdings）耗時七年設計完成。公司總部位于弗吉尼亞州雷斯頓。本次處女航是往返珍珠港海軍基地，全程4000多英里，也是第一次重要的驗證理念的航行。

以前從未嘗試過類似行動。雖然人工智能系統保持了艦艇的正常航行，也成功地避免了與其他船只相撞，但機械系統中的一個小故障便影響了整個航行任務。此事也提醒了技術專家，不管技術多么先進，普通的機械問題就能導致項目失敗。

護衛艇上14名后勤人員的小組立刻行動起來?；埂た死继乩锸侨R多斯的一名系統工程師，他和其他人迅速跳進一艘堅固的充氣船駛向海上獵人號?？死继乩镌泿椭摯谑サ隇称届o的海水中穿行，他表示沖向海上獵人號時一點也沒有擔心海浪。原型艦船體有三層，靈感來自于波利尼西亞的瓦卡獨木舟，比顛簸的護衛艇航行起來穩定得多。

“這次航行比之前經歷的都要順利。”克拉布特里回憶說。在簡單修復軟件后，問題解決了。最后海上獵人停靠珍珠港，順利完成了為期10天的返航之旅。

值得注意的是，海上獵人號是第一艘穿越大洋的無人艦，也是萊多斯為海軍從零開始設計的第一艘艦艇。

萊多斯前身是科學應用國際公司（SAIC），50年前由羅伯特·貝斯特創立，除了在政府承包界，幾乎鮮為人知。羅伯特·貝斯特是一位才華橫溢且富有創業精神的物理學家，曾經在洛斯·阿拉莫斯國家實驗室研究氫彈。貝斯特曾經是一位狂熱的水手，也是游艇競賽隊長丹尼斯·康納的朋友。1983年，康納的隊伍在美洲杯帆船賽上輸給了艾倫·邦德率領的澳大利亞隊，也是美國在此項賽事上132年來首嘗敗績，貝斯特要求SAIC開發軟件模擬改進后的船體設計。第二年康納奪回了獎杯。

這一設計在未來的海軍項目中派上了用場，但直到2012年才公開重新出現，當時一份價值5900萬美元開發無人艦艇的合同勝出，也再次確認了軟件的關鍵地位。為了開發海上獵人號，該公司還利用了許多相關項目的專業知識，包括為海軍開發水下傳感器、為國家海洋和大氣管理局調查海岸線，以及利用人工智能處理衛星圖像等等。

正因為擅長整合各種技術，萊多斯才能夠低調地擔任五角大樓重要承包商長達50年。去年該公司收入102億美元，在2019年《財富》美國500強中排名311位，也是連續第三次躋身榜單。

盡管國防和情報領域占收入近一半，萊多斯幾乎觸及了聯邦政府技術和后勤工作的方方面面，包括負責弗雷德里克國家癌癥研究實驗室、為軍用車輛設計微波系統以檢測簡易爆炸裝置，以及幫國防部搭建數字病歷系統等。分析師預計，該公司今年收入將增長5%，達到107億美元，利潤增長8%，達6.27億美元。

目前在華爾街看來，海上獵人號根本算不上亮點，但如果海軍計劃訂購十幾艘或更多無人艦，而萊多斯獲得大部分訂單的話，可能會成為巨大的增長動力。

當中不確定性很多。僅僅因為萊多斯為海上獵人號設計出了原型，并不能夠保證爭取到未來數十億美元的合同。國防合同競爭十分慘烈，訴訟和抗議活動司空見慣。2018年，因為競爭對手抱怨定價一份電子表格中出現了個別空白單元格，萊多斯就失去了價值20億美元的美國司法部IT合同投標資格。“讓我徹夜難眠的是，有人說他們能夠做得更好。”海上獵人號的高級項目經理羅斯·庫克說。“這將是對納稅人金錢的巨大浪費。”

萊多斯目前開發的人工智能軟件可能會提供很大的幫助。其他公司都沒有公開展示過技術接近的產品?！八麄円呀浤軌蜃屧团炏滤?，在海里執行任務了。”布萊恩·麥克格拉斯說，他是一位退役21年海軍老兵，現在是哈德遜研究所美國海權中心的副主任?！扒熬昂芰钊伺d奮。”

The 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 Holdings, 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 technology, 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 enduring,” Crabtree recalls. A simple software fix corrected the problem, 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 crossing 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 Laboratory. 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 developing underwater sensors for the Navy, performing coastline surveys for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and conducting A.I. work to process satellite imagery.

That’s exactly the kind of eclectic mix of tech-savvy competencies that have underpinned Leidos’s five-decade existence as an under-the-radar but important Pentagon contractor. With $10.2 billion in revenues last year, the company is ranked 311 on the Fortune 500 for 2019—its third straight appearance on this list.

While defense and intelligence work generates nearly half of revenues, Leidos has its hands in virtually every aspect of the federal government’s technological and logistical efforts, including running the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research, designing a microwave system for military vehicles to detect IEDs, and building a digital medical records system for the Defense Department. Analysts expect the firm’s revenue to rise 5% this year, to $10.7 billion, with earnings climbing 8%, to $627 million.

For now, Sea Hunter isn’t even a blip on Wall Street’s radar screen, but it could become a big growth driver if Leidos wins a major role in the Navy’s upcoming plans to add a dozen or more autonomous ships.

That’s a big if. Just because Leidos designed the prototype for Sea Hunter doesn’t guarantee it a role in the multibillion-dollar contracts to come. In the ruthless world of defense contracting, lawsuits and protests are common; Leidos was bumped from one $2 billion bidding battle for a Justice Department IT contract in 2018 when a competitor complained that a pricing spreadsheet had some blank cells. “What keeps me up at night is someone else claiming they can do better,” says Rus Cook, Sea Hunter’s senior program manager. “That would just be a huge waste of the taxpayers’ money.”

The A.I. software it has developed so far could give Leidos a big leg up. No other company has publicly demonstrated anything close. “They’ve got the archetype out there in the water, doing its thing on the open ocean,” says Bryan McGrath, a retired 21-year Navy veteran who is now deputy director of the Center for American Seapower at the Hudson Institute. “It’s really exciting for the future.”

萊多斯的前身SAIC之前一直是受人尊敬的政府承包商，2004年公司的創始人及首席執行官貝斯特因為反對公司上市而被趕下臺，之后近10年里遇到各種問題。奧巴馬時代國防預算削減打擊了該司收入增長，也導致萊多斯歷史上第一次出現經營虧損。最嚴重的是，一場涉及紐約市工資項目的大規模丑聞導致兩名高管入獄，相關罰款和賠償總計超過5億美元。與此同時，聯邦政府收緊了利益沖突規則，促使諾斯羅普格拉曼和洛克希德-馬丁等大承包商剝離了服務部門。

因此在2012年，萊多斯一分為二縮小規模。剝離出的技術服務業務沿用SAIC的名稱，負責升級軍用車輛和組裝飛行模擬器等。規模更大的信息技術和科學部門則改名萊多斯，該名稱是將英文單詞“萬花筒”（kaleidoscope）前后部分刪掉得來。

萊多斯聘請了現年62歲的羅杰·克羅恩負責新公司，他畢業于佐治亞理工學院，擁有哈佛大學的工商管理碩士學位。2014年加入萊多斯之前，他曾經在波音、麥道和通用動力等公司擔任財務和項目管理高級職位。

克羅恩穿著剪裁考究的海藍色套裝，系著名牌紫色領帶，也是萊多斯的代表色，一頭銀發飄逸。不管出席何種聽證會，他都能輕易融入國會的參議員和說客之中。但這位首席執行官實際上是一個計算機天才，他講述過在辛辛那提附近長大，還有最早開始編程的故事。當時他有一臺TRS-80家用電腦。后來自己升級了電腦，幫助位于澤維爾大學附近的IBM 360主機寫打孔卡程序，兼職工作每小時賺7美元。他做這項工作之前在辛辛那提的比薩餅店打工，編程老師發現后鼓勵他更好地發揮自己所長。但他并不滿足于尋找錯誤并重寫代碼，所以后來投身航天工程，設計飛機、直升機和宇宙飛船。

在克羅恩接任首席執行官一年后，遇上了一些不錯的交易機會。國防巨頭洛克希德-馬丁斥資90億美元收購西科斯基飛機，決定出售IT業務籌集一些資金，該部門規模龐大，總銷售額約為50億美元。克羅恩以46億美元（主要是股票）吞下了相關業務，包括設計下一代空中交通管制系統、為美國社會保障局提供數十億美元的IT項目以及一系列軍事項目。

該筆交易令萊多斯的收入幾乎翻了一番，2016年夏天最終完成，剛好趕上特朗普政府上臺后大幅增加國防開支，以應對越來越大的軍事威脅。

在成功收購整合后，萊多斯的收入不斷上升。去年的收入是合并前12個月訂單收入51億美元的兩倍。今年第一季度，萊多斯訂貨量增長到創紀錄的215億美元，主要因為管理美國航空航天局的IT網絡長達10年，價值30億美元的合同。自2014年7月克羅恩接手以來，萊多斯股價最近已漲至75美元，回報率達207%。同期標準普爾500指數上漲60%，道瓊斯美國精選航空航天和國防指數上漲了106%。

除了國防和情報領域，萊多斯也深入參與大量癌癥和疫苗的關鍵研究，還為政府遠在南極洲的麥克默多站研究前哨站提供補給和物流網絡，夏季為超過1000常駐人口往返運送人員和物資。在2017年感恩節期間，首席執行官克羅恩被困在該基地，才實地了解到了基地多么偏遠。

由于訪問時間超出了預期，他在基地拍了數百張海豹的照片，其中一張掛在他辦公室辦公桌對面的墻上。照片旁邊是個有點凌亂的書柜，裝著他幫助設計過的飛機以及跟洛克希德-馬丁交易的紀念品，還有他的三個孩子在小時候做的手工品，現在孩子們都已成年。

Long a well-regarded government contractor, Leidos predecessor SAIC suffered from almost 10 years of problems after the 2004 ouster of founder and CEO Beyster, who opposed taking the company public. The Obama-era defense budget cuts hammered the company’s revenue growth and contributed to the first-ever operating loss in Leidos history. And most damaging, a massive scandal involving a New York City payroll project landed two executives in jail and resulted in fines and restitution costs totaling more than $500 million. At the same time, the federal government tightened its conflict-of-interest rules, prompting big contractors like Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin to spin off their services divisions.

So in 2012, the company moved to shrink itself by splitting in two. A technical services unit, which performed tasks like upgrading military vehicles and assembling flight simulators, was spun off under the SAIC name. The larger information technology and sciences unit went forward as Leidos. The name was created by lopping off the front and the back of the word kaleidoscope.

To run the new operation, Leidos hired Roger Krone, now 62, an aerospace engineering graduate from Georgia Tech who holds an MBA from Harvard. Before joining Leidos in 2014, he served in senior positions of finance and project management at Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, and General Dynamics.

In a well-tailored navy suit with an on-brand purple tie, the Leidos corporate color, and a distinguished shock of silver hair, Krone could fit in easily on Capitol Hill among the senators and lobbyists at any hearing. But the CEO is a computer nerd at heart, recounting stories of his earliest programming days growing up near Cincinnati with a TRS-80 home computer that he upgraded himself and writing programs on punch cards for an IBM 360 mainframe at nearby Xavier University. The part-time punch-card job, which paid $7 an hour, came after his programming teacher caught him working the ovens at Pizza Bob’s in Cincinnati and challenged him to put his skills to better use. But finding the bugs and rewriting code didn’t suggest a satisfying career path, so he went into aerospace engineering, eventually helping design airplanes, helicopters, and spacecraft.

A year after taking over as CEO, a bargain of sorts fell into Krone’s lap. Defense giant Lockheed Martin had spent $9 billion to acquire Sikorsky Aircraft and decided to raise some money by selling its IT businesses, a jumble of units with total sales of about $5 billion. For $4.6 billion, paid mostly in stock, Krone gobbled up businesses whose work included designing a next-generation air-traffic control system, billions of dollars of IT programs for the Social Security Administration, and a host of military projects.

The deal, which nearly doubled Leidos’s revenue, closed in the summer of 2016, coinciding almost perfectly with the arrival of the Trump administration and major increases in defense spending to combat the growing military presence of China and smaller threats from North Korea and Russia.

Having successfully integrated the acquisition, Leidos is on the upswing; revenue last year was twice the $5.1 billion the company booked for the 12 months before the merger. And in the first quarter of this year, the Leidos backlog of business grew to a record $21.5 billion, aided by a $3 billion contract to run NASA’s IT network for up to 10 years. Leidos’s share price, at $75 recently, has returned 207% since Krone took over in July 2014. That compares with a 60% rise in the S&P 500 index and a 106% gain for the Dow Jones U.S. Select Aerospace and Defense index.

In addition to defense and intelligence work, Leidos is deeply involved in a wide range of critical research on cancer and vaccines. It also runs the supply and logistics network for the government’s remote McMurdo Station research outpost in Antarctica, moving people and supplies back and forth from the U.S. for a residential population that can exceed 1,000 in the summer. CEO Krone learned firsthand just how remote the base can be when he got stuck there over Thanksgiving in 2017.

Souvenirs of that longer-than-expected stay are the hundreds of photographs he took of the seals there, one of which adorns the wall opposite the desk in his office. Nearby, a somewhat cluttered bookcase contains mementos of aircraft he helped design and the Lockheed Martin deal, alongside childhood artwork from his three now-grown children.

當2016年海上獵人號第一次下水時，它像一頭光滑的灰色野獸，外表兇猛，對人類也不友好。船內沒有容納船員的內部設施，例如臥室、廚房和浴室，也沒有扶手和甲板上用來緩沖的墊子。畢竟，海軍訂購的是能跟蹤敵方潛艇并抵抗登船者的無人艦。萊多斯的測試人員第一次沿著俄勒岡州的哥倫比亞河試航時，他們需要在甲板上加上扶手和防滑層才可以安全地登船。還有個小一些用螺栓固定的駕駛室用來裝人，有些金屬欄桿連接設備。項目高級經理庫克表示，加上的設施讓他不太自在?！熬拖裨诳茽柧S特跑車上裝了一個車頂行李架?！彼f。

但是如果沒有附加設備，兩年后海上獵人號在公海中拋錨時，工程師幾乎不可能上船修理發動機。不到一個小時，克拉布特里和海軍工程師重新啟動了艦艇，問題出在一處很容易修正的軟件設置上。

軍方常用的無人機已經實現遙控，某些水下艦艇也用上了計算機控制的碰撞避免程序，但海上獵人號的設計是為了實現更高水平的自動控制，這一挑戰與設計自主車輛并無不同。雖然海上航行與公路行駛差別很大，但錯誤的風險要高得多。而且海上沒有道路標志、車道或易于軟件跟蹤的分界線。庫克自認為“對無人技術很挑剔”，他表示，“我認為（無人駕駛）汽車更容易?！?/p>

萊多斯設計海上獵人號時，要遵循船與船遭遇時人類處理的基本規則，這要求船只根據特點和功能遵循不同的程序。通常來說，一艘船保持航線，另一艘船讓路。不過，根據是帆船還是機動船、風向和許多其他標準，優先順序也會有所不同。海上獵人使用照相機和雷達的傳感器數據評估遭遇的其他船只，并恰當地選擇正確的操作方式。

本次是海軍主導“無人駕駛”情況下的大型試航，希望證明無人艦艇的概念已經能夠迎接更大的挑戰。海上獵人號表演優異后，今年4月，美國海軍提出設計具備作戰能力的中型和大型（長達300英尺）水上無人艦艇。海軍水面作戰主任少將羅納德·博考爾表示，“我們希望尋找每一美元殺傷力最大的船只。”無人艦艇“目前處于研發階段，但只要我們認為準備就緒，就可以相對迅速地進入作戰采購階段。”

2017年12月，海軍從萊多斯訂購了第二艘海上獵手，在密西西比州的格爾夫波特建造。下一步，萊多斯將參與2020年中大型無人艦艇項目，也可能會與造船領域其他更為專業的承包商合作，如通用動力公司和亨廷頓·英格爾斯。有點類似之前萊多斯為飛機制造成像和傳感器儀器，由其他公司提供巡航導彈制導系統。

波音公司和洛克希德-馬丁公司則專心研發無人潛艇，可以避免在水面上遭遇其他船只的復雜情況。2017年，羅爾斯·羅伊斯展示了一艘類似于海上獵人號的海軍無人艦艇，但并未實際建造。此后，該公司將商業船舶業務出售給了挪威的康士伯集團公司。目前，康士伯一直努力研發民用無人駕駛船舶，已經改裝了一艘渡輪，在芬蘭圖爾庫群島周圍行駛了幾英里，還與造船商瓦爾德控股合作建造一艘大型無人集裝箱船，將于明年開航。

無人艦艇將為海軍節省大量資金。美國國防高級研究計劃局初步負責無人艦艇項目，為該部門做的一項研究顯示，海上獵人號每天的運行成本可以為2萬美元，而完全載人的驅逐艦執行類似任務費用高達70萬美元。如果將海戰比作下國際象棋，無人艦隊不用擔心水手生命危險，就可以擔任追蹤潛艇、掃除魚類和通信中繼任務的“小兵”，載人船只則擔任“國王”和“王后”。

至于海軍無人項目，萊多斯的工程師模擬了更典型的單體和雙體設計，以及制造潛水器的可能性。他們驚訝地發現，裝上兩個外接支架后主船體更穩定、速度更快，維護成本也更低。“正因為我們不是造船廠，所以我們能夠從全新角度去考慮?！笨肆_恩說。

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 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 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.

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 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.”

In December 2017, the Navy ordered a second Sea Hunter from Leidos, being built in Gulfport, Miss. Next, the company will compete for a part in the 2020 medium and large unmanned vessel programs. It’s likely to partner with other contractors more expert in the world of shipbuilding, such as General Dynamics and Huntington Ingalls. That would be similar to Leidos’s work building imaging and sensor instruments for planes and guidance systems for cruise missiles, which are built by others.

Boeing and Lockheed Martin, for their part, have concentrated on underwater unmanned craft, avoiding the complications of navigating amid other vessels on the surface. And Rolls-Royce Holdings showed off renderings of an autonomous naval vessel somewhat like the Sea Hunter in 2017 but never produced a craft. It has since sold its commercial boating business to Norway’s Kongsberg Gruppen ASA. Kongsberg has so far focused on developing civilian unmanned craft. It has a refit ferry that navigated its way on a journey of a few miles around Finland’s Turku Archipelago and is also working with shipbuilder Vard Holdings to build a huge autonomous container ship that should be ready to sail next year.

Autonomous vessels will save a ton of money for the Navy. According to a study produced for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, which initially oversaw the autonomous vessel program, Sea Hunter can operate for $20,000 per day, compared with $700,000 to run a fully manned destroyer performing similar missions. And with no sailors at risk, an autonomous fleet could serve as “pawns” for tracking subs, clearing mines, and acting as communications relays while manned vessels remain the “king” and “queen” pieces for large-scale battles in the Navy’s ocean-borne chess match against China and Russia.

For the unmanned Navy project, Leidos engineers ran simulations of more typical single- and twin-hull designs, as well as some submersible possibilities. But to their surprise, they found that a main hull with two outriggers was more stable, faster, and cheaper to maintain. “I think because we weren’t a shipbuilder, we really came at it with a very fresh look,” says Krone.

萊多斯的三塊業務都發展穩健。今年一季度，國防收入強勁增長了7%；占收入三分之一的民用部門增長了2%；衛生保健是最強勁的部門，收入增長了9%。該部門貢獻了18%的收入，主要針對醫療保險欺詐并提供殘疾檢查，該業務最核心的是管理馬里蘭州弗雷德里克國家癌癥研究實驗室，該實驗室每年預算達5.4億美元。

這家閃閃發光的國家實驗室坐落在華盛頓以北45英里，凱托克廷山腳下寧靜的山坡上。1972年該實驗室由前美國總統尼克松從生物武器研究機構迪特里克堡中分拆出來，主要任務是研究癌癥、艾滋病和其他太難或太不確定的，私營部門很難從中獲利的領域。2008年，萊多斯獲得了50億美元的運營合同，并在2015年增加了15億美元。

在占地33萬平方英尺的設施內部，一間黑暗的實驗室里，高功率顯微鏡下激光正在照射“湯米的跳舞分子”。分子是癌細胞內的RAS蛋白，在黑色顯示屏上呈鋸齒狀排列。蛋白質編碼基因突變是30%人類癌癥的根源?！皽住敝傅氖窃谌R多斯工作的科學家湯米·特比維爾，他正在研究可不可以直接定位導致一些最致命疾病的突變蛋白，從而治療胰腺、結腸和肺部癌癥。如果有藥物可以抑制RAS蛋白，就能夠拯救數百萬人的生命，但私營部門在研究30年一無所獲后已經基本放棄。

特比維爾留著整齊的白胡子，戴著黑眼鏡，實驗室外套里穿著牛仔褲，他在實驗室里一邊四處奔波一邊解釋說，該項目跟蹤跳舞分子并測量速度，為移動方式而創建計算機模型，希望能夠發現突變的RAS中可用藥物攻擊的新漏洞。實驗室的另一角，價值100萬美元的機器人裝置正在將不同的化合物注入RAS蛋白的測試板中。

萊多斯的科學家還有一臺價值700萬美元的低溫電子顯微鏡，美國研究癌癥人員都可以免費使用。另一個項目的重點是想辦法降低注射宮頸癌疫苗所需劑量和成本。

“這是國家實驗室履行使命的完美例證?！比R多斯生物醫學研究子公司的首席科學家萊恩·弗里德曼表示?！癛AS是一些最常見癌癥的關鍵，盡管付出了艱苦卓著的努力，還是沒有人能夠（設計）抑制劑?！睂嶒炇业呐﹂_始取得成果。今年將開始人體臨床試驗，測試一些有望治療RAS相關癌癥的藥物，不過能否成功尚不確定。

All three Leidos divisions are in healthy shape. Defense revenue grew a robust 7% in the first quarter of this year; the civilian unit, which makes up a third of revenue, was up 2%; and health care was the strongest segment, posting a 9% revenue gain. This unit, which contributes 18% of revenue, targets Medicare fraud and provides disability exams, but the crown jewel of the business is the management of the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research in Maryland, which sports a $540 million annual budget.

The gleaming national lab sits on a serene hillside at the foot of the Catoctin Mountains, 45 miles north of Washington, D.C. Split off from nearby Fort Detrick, home of the nation’s bioweapons research, by President Nixon in 1972, the lab’s charge is to focus on cancer, AIDS, and other areas that have proved too tough or too uncertain to be profitable for the private sector. Leidos won a $5 billion contract in 2008 to run the lab and added a $1.5 billion extension in 2015.

In one darkened lab room in the ?bowels of the 330,000-square-foot facility, “Tommy’s dancing molecules” are getting zapped with laser light in a high-powered microscope. Appearing as zigzagging dots across a black display, the molecules are RAS proteins inside of cancer cells. Mutations of the gene that encodes the instructions for making the protein are at the root of 30% of all human cancers. “Tommy” is Tommy Turbyville. A scientist working for Leidos, he is trying to figure out if there’s a way to directly target the mutant proteins, which cause some of the deadliest forms of the disease, including cancer in the pancreas, colon, and lungs. The discovery of a drug that inhibits RAS could save millions of lives, but the private sector, which has come up empty after 30 years, has largely given up pursuing it on its own.

With a trim white beard and black glasses, and wearing jeans under his lab coat, Turbyville is full of energy as he bounds across the lab to explain that by tracking the dancing molecules, measuring their speed, and creating computer models for how they move, the project aims to uncover new vulnerabilities in mutant RAS that could be attacked with drugs. In another part of the lab, a $1 million robotic setup is injecting different compounds into test plates of RAS proteins.

Leidos scientists also operate a $7 million cryo-electron microscope that cancer researchers all over the country can use for free. Another project is focused on finding a way to lower the required dosage—and cost—of administering the HPV vaccine.

“It’s the perfect example of what a national lab should be doing,” says Len Freedman, chief scientist at Leidos’s biomedical research subsidiary. “RAS is behind some of the most common cancers, but despite thunderous efforts, nobody has gotten close to [designing] an inhibitor.” Still, the lab’s efforts are starting to bear fruit. Clinical trials for humans are starting this year for several promising drugs to address some RAS-related cancers, though it’s unknown whether the trials will succeed.

返回圣迭戈后，近來海上獵人號的大部分時間都在碼頭，大約每個月都要測試一次軟硬件調整。實地來看，這艘船比圖片上顯得要大，幾乎有半個足球場那么長，而且帶兩個尖頭的外伸支架和鋒利船頭顯得格外兇悍。駕駛艙里有個塑料草裙舞女孩擺件，寫著“祝你好運”，除此之外沒有人類的痕跡。未經許可的參觀者不可參觀甲板下面，顯然不會是船員宿舍?！跋旅媸桥硕嗬瑢УV石（電影《阿凡達》里虛構的礦石——譯者注）造的時間機器?！焙髞硎紫瘓绦泄倏肆_恩開玩笑說。

如今海上獵人號遇到最大的威脅是偶爾有閑逛的海獅爬到外伸支架上，而且一來就不愿意走?！爸荒艿人麄冏约合麓??！奔又蓐柟庀聨炜宋⑿χf，此時巨型驅逐艦和貨船正在藍色海灣里航行，駛過了附近著名的洛馬岬燈塔。（財富中文網）

本文發表于《財富》雜志2019年6月刊，標題為《公海探險》。

譯者：Ms

Back in San Diego, Sea Hunter spends most of its time these days in dock, going out to test new tweaks to its hardware and software about once a month. In person, the ship is larger than it looks in pictures—nearly half the length of a football field—and more fierce, with its two pointed outriggers and sharp bow. There’s a small plastic “good luck” hula girl in the cockpit but almost no other human touches. Visitors without clearance aren’t allowed to see what’s below deck, although it’s obviously not crew quarters. “That’s where the unobtainium time machine is,” CEO Krone jokes later.

The biggest threat to the ship these days is the occasional loafing sea lion that clambers onto one of the outriggers and won’t be moved. “You just have to wait until they get off,” says Cook, smiling in the California sunshine, while giant destroyers and cargo ships ply the blue waters of the bay and cruise past the famed Point Loma Lighthouse nearby.

This article appears in the June 2019 issue of Fortune with the headline “Adventure on the High Seas.”