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Sea Shadow (IX-529)

1985 COLD WAR

History

Lockheed has extensive experience developing the famed F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighter, which made its public debut in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm. Previously, radar-evading aircraft had been deployed and flown over Grenada in June 1981the product of a top-secret "Blue" program. The aircraft is built around a number of radar evasion and absorption technologies, namely special skin coatings and angular surfaces.

Knowing this, Lockheed engineers applied the same concept to an ocean-going vessel, and the work resulted in the Sea Shadow (IX-529) - the world's first stealthy ship that gracefully navigates waters.

Originally used for submarine testing, the original Sea Shadow design featured a cigar-shaped hull covered with multiple panels. The intent was to limit sonar returns, which eventually led engineers to discover some very important results when working with their submarine models. However, Lockheed had a hard time convincing the Pentagon of the merits of stealth submarines, especially ones that were slower than existing types, so the idea evolved into stealth warships, which piqued the interest of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Project agency, and the division has a contract with Lockheed's Skunk Works.

The Sea Shadow program gained momentum in the early 1980s as the F-117 began to become the world's first operational stealth aircraft in the U.S. Air Force inventory. The Sea Shadow project was another top-secret Lockheed project, as the ship wasn't revealed to the public until 1993. Assembled in Redwood City, California, the vessel was stored under the Hughes Mining Barge (HMB-1), a submersible barge with an integrated crane - designed to recover sunken Soviet Navy K-129s Submarine, which disappeared in March 1968.

The mining barge itself was launched in 1974 and was eventually converted into a floating drydock.

Sea Shadow itself has a completely unique look in the world of naval vehicles. It looks like a catamaran design, when in reality it is a small seaplane area catamaran - or "SWATH" - with its hull structure raised entirely out of the water. This approach gives the boat inherently good stability in rough seas and is faster when cutting through the water.

The fuselage takes advantage of the angled approach already seen in the F-117's hybrid wing/fuselage approach, and its bridges are appropriately contoured at the front of the ship. A flat roofline acts as some sort of deck, with limited projections visible along the length of the roof.

There are also entry hatches along the roofline. The entire crew consists of only four people (helmsman, commander, engineer and navigator), as system automation is another key component of the plan.

Trials began in 1981, and it was found that the ship's twin-propeller setup was producing excessive wake turbulence. It was found that these systems were installed in reverse and, when corrected, produced substantially less wake turbulence since then. As the Pentagon lost interest in the design, Haiying could only be tested and was never pushed into a formal evaluation.

Sea Shadow went into dry dock and was never launched again, although some of its valuable data was later applied to new Navy submarines and warships that came online a decade later, lest all be lost.

The production line for the Sea Shadow ended in 2006, when the US Navy was still looking for a buyer for the test vessel - early attempts to auction the hull failed to find a buyer. After lowering the price and planning another auction (one that required the buyer to completely scrap the ship and its mining barge), Sea Shadow finally found a buyer at the Bay Ship & Yacht Company, which bought the vessel for $2 $170 million worth of ships. 5000000.

The sale was completed in 2012, and the company stuck to the Navy's claims and scrapped the Sea Shadow that same year.

The vessel featured prominently in the 007 film "Tomorrow Never Dies" is based on the Sea Shadow and bears a resemblance to the experimental ship.