The Sea Shadow ship was kept secret for 9 years and looked like it was meant to kill
Developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for the Navy in 1984 and pretty much kept secret until 1993, the experimental stealth ship now finds itself on the auction block and currently there is a bid of $99,075 on the web site for the boat.
The nearly 500-ton $195 million Sea Shadow built by Lockheed looks like something straight out of a James Bond film and in fact was said to be the inspiration behind the ship in the Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies. In real life the ship was designed to test out what the Navy called “advanced hull forms and structures, automation for reduced manning [it only had 12 sleeping births], sea keeping and ship signature control.”
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From a Navy.mil write up: In the early 1980s, the vessel was built modularly under tight secrecy by different manufacturers and assembled inside the Hughes Mining Barge (HMB), at Redwood City, Calif. There, the HMB would be moved out to sea in the dead of night and halfway submerged, to let Sea Shadow out to be tested without being overly exposed to public observation. “It was never intended to be mission-capable,” the Navy said. And so it was never designated as “USS,” but contrary to what some might believe, it was listed in the Navy’s inventory as a miscellaneous craft. The Sea Shadow doesn’t have traditional rudders to steer with. Aft stabilizers and forward canards on the inboard side of its submerged twin hulls control steering. Combined with the angled sides, this also helps the ship remain stable even in very rough water of up to sea state five, which means waves of up to 18-feet high.
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The ship had a steel hull and a diesel electric engine.
Sadly though whoever buys it will have to dispose of the boat “by completely dismantling and scrapping within the USAA…Dismantling and scrapping is defined as reducing the property such as it has no value except for its basic material content,” according to the GSA Auctions auction web site. So you better take lots of pictures standing on it maybe for use as a Christmas card photo for next year.
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