 Click pic to watch the slide show |
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.
The barge, by the way, is the only fully submersible dry dock ever built, making it very handy — as it was 35 years ago — for trying to raise a sunken nuclear-armed Soviet submarine.
[…]
The Navy brought Sea Shadow out of the shadows for daylight tests in 1993, setting off a flash of publicity. It hit the cover of Popular Mechanics. Revell made a plastic model. A mad media mogul used a Sea Shadow look-alike to foment war between Britain and China in a 1997 James Bond movie “Tomorrow Never Dies.”In 2006, its experimental life at an end, Sea Shadow and the barge it was boxed in were struck from the Navy’s register and tied up in Suisun Bay, near San Francisco. The technologies it developed have sired a generation of land-attack destroyers and ocean-surveillance ships. “Sea Shadow is the mother of all stealth ships in the world,” says Mr. Gupta. It ought to be displayed out in the open on dry land, he thinks, its invisibility visible to all.
Sea shadow would make a great smugglin’ craft. I’d feel nervous in the open ocean though. Being invisable is fine until some tanker cut’s you in half because they couldn’t see you in radar.
#1,
Or the Coast Guard starts shooting because they think you might be carrying something you shouldn’t.
If I only lived in the states, this would make an awesome bachelor pad – studio apartment! Hawl it up on shore and transport it to a nice cheap piece of land thanks to the foreclosures.. one of a kind! Might get a bit hot in the summers though – could pimp it out with some nice solar panels/cells
The two greatest days in a boat owners life are the day he gets it and the day he gets rid of it.
Seems like this is true for the navy as well.
That is one weird looking thingy. I saw it in Redwood City harbor area looong time ago. One night we were cruising around in inflatable boat (but don’t ask me why) and didn’t really know what it was.
hhmmm looks like it would make a great (high speed) passenger ferry for someone.. wish i had the cash for that… would set it up for ferry service on the great lakes..
Anyone call Batman about this yet? They look like his kinda style. 🙂
But seriously, if I had a place to keep one of these I’d jump on it.
I don’t think it will fit in the garage.
Wouldnt this be neet as YOUR HOUSE??
“AdmFubar said, on February 26th, 2009 at 10:31 am
hhmmm looks like it would make a great (high speed) passenger ferry for someone.. wish i had the cash for that… would set it up for ferry service on the great lakes..”
There was a high speed ferry from Rochester to Toronto. It was a Massive financial failure. Granted there were some massive problems in the project’s management, but a word of warning…
Not all that radical a design from the Civil War Merrimack. Which was about the same shape. But designed to deflect cannon shells, not radar. But I wonder if this thing’s design, is stable in rough seas? Stealth often come at a price. And most submarines are already stealthy enough. Why do they need something that can’t submerge completely? I’m sure the navy wasted billions of dollars trying to figure out ways to justify this thing, with all kinds of mission scenarios, rewritten from submarine strategies. We can be glad they didn’t contract a fleet of these things.
“Invisible” sea vessels, kind of falls into the same realm as the Star Trek franchise’s approach to “cloaked” starships. Or rather, why Star Fleet DIDN’T cloak their ships, after Kirk stole the Romulan device. They decided it would be bad to have starships bumping into each other (I guess). Of course the real reason was it was pointless to make movies (and Tv episodes) about a vessel you supposedly couldn’t see. They were meant to impress, right? So maybe the US Navy came to the same conclusion. This sort of stealth vessel, is no where near as impressive to the public as ships with a great deal of guns sticking out at all angles. Stealth not being as good a propaganda tool for recruitment.
The so-called mining barge of Hughes, is very likely the old Glomar Explorer. Refitted some years back for deep sea oil drilling. But apparently, still owned by the US Navy, while under contract use to big oil. Talk about your corporate subsides!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_Explorer