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Sea Shadow sailing through Californian waters near San Francisco in March 1999 | |
History | |
---|---|
United States | |
Name | Sea Shadow |
Awarded | 22 October 1982 |
Builder | Lockheed Shipbuilding and Construction Company |
Completed | 1984 |
Acquired | 1 March 1985 |
Out of service | September 2006 |
Stricken | September 2006 |
Fate | Scrapped in 2012 |
General characteristics | |
Type | Stealth ship |
Displacement | 563 long tons (572 t) |
Length | 164 ft (50 m) |
Beam | 68 ft (21 m) |
Draft | 15 ft (4.6 m) |
Propulsion | Diesel-electric |
Speed | 14.2 knots (26.3 km/h; 16.3 mph) |
Complement | 4 |
Armament | None |
Sea Shadow (IX-529) was an experimental stealth ship built by Lockheed for the United States Navy to determine how a low radar profile might be achieved and to test high-stability hull configurations that have been used in oceanographic ships.
Sea Shadow was built in 1984 to examine the application of stealth technology on naval vessels and was used in secret until a public debut in 1993. In addition, the ship was designed to test the use of automation to reduce crew size. The ship was created by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S. Navy and Lockheed. Sea Shadow was developed and built at Lockheed's Redwood City, California, facility, inside the Hughes Mining Barge (HMB-1), which functioned as a floating drydock during construction and testing. [1]
Sea Shadow had a SWATH (small-waterplane-area twin hull) design. Below the water were submerged twin hulls, each with a propeller, aft stabilizer, and inboard hydrofoil. The portion of the ship above water was connected to the hulls via the two angled struts. The SWATH design helped the ship remain stable in rough water up to sea state 6 (wave height of 18 feet (5.5 m) or "very rough" sea). The shape of the superstructure was sometimes compared to the casemate of the ironclad ram CSS Virginia of the American Civil War. [1]
Sea Shadow had 12 bunks, one small microwave oven, a refrigerator and table. It was not intended to be mission-capable and was never commissioned, although it was listed in the Naval Vessel Register.
Sea Shadow was revealed to the public in 1993 and was housed at the San Diego Naval Station until September 2006, when it was relocated with the Hughes Mining Barge to the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet in Benicia, California. Until 2006, Sea Shadow and the HMB-1 were maintained and operated by Lockheed Martin for the US Navy. The vessels were available for donation to a maritime museum. [1]
The USNS Impeccable and Victorious ocean surveillance ships have inherited the stabilizer and canard method to help perform their stability-sensitive intelligence collection missions. [1]
In 2006, the U.S. Navy tried to sell Sea Shadow to the highest bidder; [1] [2] after the initial offering met with a lack of interest, it was listed for dismantling sale on gsaauctions.gov. [3] The US government mandated that the buyer not sail the ship and be required to scrap it. The ship was finally sold in 2012. [4] [5] Sea Shadow was dismantled in 2012 by Bay Ship & Yacht Company. [6]
In the 1997 James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies , media tycoon Elliot Carver (Sir Jonathan Pryce) operated a stealth ship that resembled Sea Shadow's appearance. Christened as Sea Dolphin II in the film, the secret and stealthy floating lair was used as a plot device to attempt to initiate World War III. [7]
In the Strike series of video games, it appears in Urban Strike as an enemy unit and in Nuclear Strike as home base.[ citation needed ]
The United States Navy, United States Coast Guard, and United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) use a hull classification symbol to identify their ships by type and by individual ship within a type. The system is analogous to the pennant number system that the Royal Navy and other European and Commonwealth navies use.
A naval ship is a military ship that is used by a navy. Naval ships are differentiated from civilian ships by construction and purpose. Generally, naval ships are damage resilient and armed with weapon systems, though armament on troop transports is light or non-existent.
An arsenal ship is a concept for a floating missile platform intended to have as many as five hundred vertical launch bays for large-sized missiles, most likely cruise missiles. In current U.S. naval thinking, such a ship would initially be controlled manually by an Aegis Cruiser, although plans that have long since been scrapped included control by AEW&C aircraft such as the E-2 Hawkeye and E-3 Sentry.
A catamaran is a watercraft with two parallel hulls of equal size. The distance between a catamaran's hulls imparts resistance to rolling and overturning. Catamarans typically have less hull volume, smaller displacement, and shallower draft (draught) than monohulls of comparable length. The two hulls combined also often have a smaller hydrodynamic resistance than comparable monohulls, requiring less propulsive power from either sails or motors. The catamaran's wider stance on the water can reduce both heeling and wave-induced motion, as compared with a monohull, and can give reduced wakes.
A dry dock is a narrow basin or vessel that can be flooded to allow a load to be floated in, then drained to allow that load to come to rest on a dry platform. Dry docks are used for the construction, maintenance, and repair of ships, boats, and other watercraft.
Black project is an informal term used to describe a highly classified, top-secret military or defense project that is not publicly acknowledged by government, military personnel, or contractors.
A small waterplane area twin hull, better known by the acronym SWATH, is a catamaran design that minimizes hull cross section area at the sea's surface. Minimizing the ship's volume near the surface area of the sea, where wave energy is located, minimizes a vessel's response to sea state, even in high seas and at high speeds. The bulk of the displacement necessary to keep the ship afloat is located beneath the waves, where it is less affected by wave action. Wave excitation drops exponentially as depth increases, so wave action normally does not affect a submerged submarine at all. Placing the majority of a ship's displacement under the waves is similar in concept to creating a ship that rides atop twin submarines.
A stealth ship is a ship that employs stealth technology construction techniques in an effort to make it harder to detect by one or more of radar, visual, sonar, and infrared methods.
The Hughes Mining Barge, or HMB-1, is a submersible barge about 99 m (324 ft) long, 32 m (106 ft) wide, and more than 27 m (90 ft) tall. The HMB-1 was originally developed as part of Project Azorian, the top-secret effort mounted by the Central Intelligence Agency to salvage the wreckage of the Soviet submarine K-129 from the ocean floor.
Sea Fighter (FSF-1) is an experimental littoral combat ship in service with the United States Navy. Its hull is of a small-waterplane-area twin-hull (SWATH) design, provides exceptional stability, even on rough seas. The ship can operate in both blue and littoral waters. For power, it can use either its dual gas-turbine engines for speed or its dual diesel engines for efficient cruising. It can be easily reconfigured through the use of interchangeable mission modules. Helicopters can land and launch on its deck. Smaller water craft can be carried and launched from its stern. The vessel is being developed under the program title Littoral Surface Craft-Experimental with a hull type designation Fast Sea Frame. The first vessel has been assigned the hull classification symbol FSF 1 and also has been referred to as the X-Craft. The vessel was designed by British company BMT Nigel Gee who continue with a role in the development of the vessel.
The Shivalik class or Project 17 class is a class of multi-role frigates in service with the Indian Navy. They are the first warships designed with low observability features built in India. They were designed to have better stealth features and land-attack capabilities than the preceding Talwar-class frigates. A total of three ships were built between 2000 and 2010, and all three were in commission by 2012.
HSwMS Visby (K31) is the lead ship of the Visby-class corvettes. It was created as a stealth ship, and underwent a decade long testing phase before it entered service with the Swedish Navy.
HSV Sea Slice was an experimental vessel, built by Lockheed Martin, for the United States Navy, later used in commercial service.
Sudhir k is an Indian-American business executive.
HSwMS Helsingborg (K32) is a Swedish Visby-class corvette. She was ordered by the Swedish Government in 1995 and is the second ship of the class built by Kockums. She has been in active service with the 31st Corvette Squadron, 3rd Naval Warfare Flotilla since 19 December 2009. It is a stealth missile corvette.
GSF Explorer, formerly USNS Hughes Glomar Explorer (T-AG-193), was a deep-sea drillship platform built for Project Azorian, the secret 1974 effort by the United States Central Intelligence Agency's Special Activities Division to recover the Soviet submarine K-129.
The Tuo Chiang-class corvette is a Taiwanese-designed class of fast and stealthy multi-mission corvettes built for the Republic of China (Taiwan) Navy. It is designed to counter the numerous and increasingly sophisticated People's Liberation Army Navy ships by utilizing hit-and-run tactics, and thus features clean upper structure design with very few extrusions to reduce radar signature, pre-cooled engine exhaust to reduce infrared signature, and a reduced visual signature to reduce chance of detection.
Juliet Marine Systems Ghost is a super-cavitating stealth ship. The ship's experimental hull design can reduce hull friction to 1/900th that of conventional watercraft. Ghost was designed, developed, and built by the private American company Juliet Marine Systems.
HSwMS Nyköping(K34) is the fourth ship commissioned of theVisby-class corvette, currently active in the Swedish Navy.
HSwMS Karlstad(K35) was the fifth ship of the Visby-class corvette.
This article includes information collected from the Naval Vessel Register , which, as a U.S. government publication, is in the public domain.The entry can be found here.