Sea Shadow (IX-529)

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Career

Ordered:	22 October 1982
Delivered:	1 March 1985
Commissioned:
Decommissioned:
Fate:	Available for donation from Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet, September 2006
Struck:
General Characteristics
Displacement:	563 tons / 572 tonnes
Length:	164 ft / 50 m
Beam:	68 ft / 21 m
Draft:	15 ft / 4.6 m
Propulsion:	Diesel electric
Speed:	10 knots / 12 mph / 19 km/h
Range:
Depth:
Complement:
Armament:

Sea Shadow (IX-529) is an experimental stealth ship built by Lockheed for the United States Navy.

1 Development
2 Overview
3 In miniature
4 In fiction
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Development

Sea Shadow was built in 1985 and used in secret but in normal service until its public debut in 1994, to examine the application of stealth technology on naval vessels. In addition, the ship would test the ability to man a ship with fewer men and using more automation. The ship was created by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the U.S. Navy and Lockheed. Sea Shadow was developed at Lockheed's Redwood City, California facility, inside the Hughes Mining Barge, which functioned as a floating drydock during construction and testing. She is sometimes incorrectly referred to as "USS Sea Shadow," but she was never a full commissioned ship of the US Navy. The Sea Shadow actually proved too stealthy, on radar it appeared as an invisible boat on a sea full of waves.

[edit] Overview

Sea Shadow has a SWATH hull design. Below the water are submerged twin hulls, each with a propeller, aft stabilizer, and inboard forward 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 (wave height of 18 feet (5.5 m) or "very rough" sea). The shape of the superstructure has sometimes been compared to the casemate of the ironclad ram CSS Virginia of the American Civil War.

The T-AGOS 19-and-23-class oceanographic ships have inherited the stabilizer and canard method to help perform their stability-sensitive surveillance missions.

Sea Shadow has only 12 bunks aboard, one small microwave oven, a refrigerator and table. It was never intended to be mission capable and was never commissioned, although she is listed in the Naval Vessel Register.

Sea Shadow was revealed to the public in 1994, and was housed at the San Diego Naval Station until September 2006, when it was relocated with the HMB-1 to the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet in Benicia, CA. The vessels are available for donation to a maritime museum.

[edit] In miniature

Revell produce a plastic model kit of the vessel in 1/144 scale.

[edit] In fiction

The villain's ship in the 1997 James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies was based on Sea Shadow although the movie version of the ship had geometric features that would make it non-stealthy. The ship in the movie also appeared to have an interior larger than its exterior. Due to its shape, the Sea Shadow's interior is actually rather small and cramped compared to the size of the ship.

In the game Nuclear Strike, the Sea Shadow acts as the player's starting point, and as a helipad on the sea-based levels. The top deck of the actual Sea Shadow, however, is not large enough to accommodate a helicopter, and using it as a landing pad would defeat its primary purpose of stealth.