This article from the Wall Street Journal was brought to our attention through Maritime Network group on LinkedIn and we thought that perhaps there might be some gCaptain readers out there that might be interested. The article reads:
Anybody want some top-secret seagoing vessels? The Navy has a pair it doesn’t need anymore. It has been trying to give them away since 2006, and they’re headed for the scrap yard if somebody doesn’t speak up soon.
One is called Sea Shadow. It’s big, black and looks like a cross between a Stealth fighter and a Batmobile. It was made to escape detection on the open sea. The other is known as the Hughes (as in Howard Hughes) Mining Barge. It looks like a floating field house, with an arching roof and a door that is 76 feet wide and 72 feet high. Sea Shadow berths inside the barge, which keeps it safely hidden from spy satellites.
According to Sea Shadow’s wikipedia page, she was built in 1985 for the U.S. Navy and used to examine the application of stealth technology on naval vessels. She was used in secret until making its public debut in 1993. Sea Shadow has a SWATH hull design. Below the water are submerged twin hulls, each with a propeller, aft stabilizer, and inboard canard. The portion of the ship above water is connected to the hulls via the two angled struts. The SWATH design helps the ship remain stable even in very rough water of up to sea state 6.
While the Sea Shadow was never fully commissioned, she was the basis for the stealth ship in the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies.
[Continue Reading →]
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Tags: · naval architecture, stealth
For the first time ever, no one correctly identified the correct answer for this week’s maritime mystery quiz. Maybe because the vessel in question is not a commercial ship but rather Sweden’s new Visby Class Stealth Corvette.
Let’s take a quick tour: [Continue Reading →]
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Tags: · Navy, stealth
Under military testing since 2006 the US Navy’s M80 Stiletto was put into action this week. Marine Link reports:
The Pentagon’s high-speed, shallow-draft “Stiletto” ship, designed and built by M Ship, completed a successful 6,000 nautical-mile deployment on a drug interdiction and apprehension mission in the waters off Colombia, the Bahamas and the Florida Straits. The deployment was capped off by a dramatic, high-speed chase of a “go-fast” boat in shallow waters near the Florida coast that resulted in the apprehension of three suspected smugglers. Continue Reading…
The ship was designed in San Diego by a private racing yacht builder. In contrast to a traditional V-Hull design the Stiletto’s M-Hull channels passing water under the vessel to provide lift, creating a smother and stable ride for its passengers, an important considering that nearly 1/3rd of Navy SEAL’s are medically discharged within 10 years due to the G-Forces applied to their bodies. The vessel is also equipped with state of the art electronics controlled by the clustered supercomputer housed in one of the hulls.
Our forum had some discussion last year over whether or not the 27M vessel should be reffered to as a ship. The old maritime addage “A ship can carry a boat but not vis-versa” might answer the debate considering it’s capable of launching, while underway, a 11M RIB from the stern. What are your thoughts on the matter?
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Tags: · boat, Marine Technology, Navy, stealth
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