My earlier post about Trevor Paglen mentioned that one of his tours is the San Diego home of the Sea Shadow. BB reader John Worthington responded with a link to several interesting photographs of the Sea Shadow taken after it was declassified a decade ago. From the Federation of American Scientists site:
Sea Shadow is a test craft developed under a combined program by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the Navy, and Lockheed Martin Missiles and Space Company. The Sea Shadow program was begun in the mid-1980s. Its purpose is to explore a variety of new technologies for surface ships, including ship control, structures, automation for reduced manning, seakeeping and signature control. In 1993-1994, the craft was revealed to the public and underwent daylight testing. Since 1994, Sea Shadow has been maintained in a lay-up status and is currently homeported at Naval Station San Diego. In anticipation of conducting future ship research and development testing, the U.S. Navy reactivated the Sea Shadow craft in early 1999. Sea Shadow will support risk reduction for future surface ship platforms such as DD 21, the Navy's 21st Century Land Attack Destroyer. The platform will allow the Navy to explore and test, in a realistic at-sea environment, important DD 21 advanced information and automation technologies that support reduced manning and ship survivability.
UPDATE: BB pal Jim Graham was the public relations person at Lockheed when the Sea Shadow came out of the black. Jim writes:
"A couple of interesting things about the Sea Shadow was how low-tech it was on the inside. The entire ship was controlled by what I think was a 286 computer and, once inside, it looked like an ordinary ship. The SWATH design (Small Water Plane Area Twin Hull) made it remarkably stable in rough seas – you could sit on top of it and drink a cup of coffee cruising through the Potato Patch outside the Golden Gate Bridge.It was also very stealthy and, in some tests, they had to add reflectors to it so that other ships in the area could detect it on radar.
It "launched" on Easter Sunday morning and I had to beg an AP photographer and Aviation Week reporter to leave their families to get on a boat to see something, but I couldn't tell them what it was. The Weekly World News had the best headline "Top secret 'Batboat' carries enough nuclear missiles to blow every major city on Earth to kingdom come!" Can't believe I missed the nukes. :)
The Sea Shadow was/is housed in the Hughes Mining Barge, which previously had been used to store "Clementine", a giant claw used by the Glomar Explorer to retrieve a sunken Soviet submarine out near Hawaii in the mid-70s."
