Stealth ship for sale

Stealthhhh

Please do not outbid Boing Boing on the Sea Shadow, a stealth ship that the US Navy is currently auctioning off. The General Services Administration is requiring that the buyer dismantle and scrap the 1982 vessel within six months of purchase. But it's stealth! They'll never know that we've restored it and are using it as a secret headquarters off Rarotonga!

"Radar-evading Navy ship for sale in public auction" (LA Times)

Sea Shadow auction (GSA Auctions)

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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The Snowden Principle

grimc

Hope you guys realize that putting a big unicorn horn on it is going to totally ruin the stealth part.
- David Pescovitz
  
  Unicorn horns are magic. That beats stealth.
  - blearghhh
    
    Are they still magic once they’ve been severed from the unicorn’s head?
    - travtastic
      
      Does curing my arthritis count as magic?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  If we put a unicorn horn on the front, you realize what has to go on the back.
  - grimc
    
    World’s biggest set of truck balls?
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      Goatse.
chaopoiesis

Guess stealth barges have only limited military use…
Nadreck

I believe that the current high bidder is a Mr. P. N. Guin.
- reglisse
  
  I hear that Elliot Carver is interested too.
Takashi Omoto

Not enough yellow stripes, eyepatch Hulk Hogan or Michael Lanning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbVss2TyML8
Alan Wexelblat

Anyone want to make odds this ends up in some drug-runner’s hands?
- RedShirt77
  
  Bing!
http://excelsior-station.wikidot.com Sarge Misfit

I’ll buy the scrap of one dollar and donate it all to Boing Boing for recycling :-D
Guest

The only real downside is that you’ll never know if the ninja pirate crew is still on board, or not, or ever was.
Rich Keller

Scrap? I was going to moor it in Lake Michigan and use it as a floating raku kiln.
http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios

….and after you buy it, you can sail it to this awesome underwater hotel in Dubai.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-2138828/Dubai-underwater-hotel-Emirate-plans-hotel-rooms-10m-surface-sea.html
- dmatos
  
  “. . . adjacent to the submerged dive centre . . “Uh, why would you have a submerged dive centre? Either you then have expensive airlocks to decompress in, or you haul the gear up to the surface and dive normally.Oh, wait. It’s Dubai. Never mind.
  - mccrum
    
    Or your dive center is above 34′, all at one atmosphere and behind standard gasketed doors with an airlock at one atmosphere. Provided both doors aren’t open at the same time, no problem. And your gear can come down via the elevator.
Brainspore

The BUYER is responsible for dismantling it? Way to go, national security watchdogs. “Hey, we only sold those anti-tank missiles to the rebels because they promised not to shoot them at tanks.”
reglisse

While looking this up I found an interesting story:
http://www.rhdriven.com/showthread.php?221792-Urban-Exploring-v.-Ghost-Ships-Sea-Shadow
- kenmce
  
  /Wonders if it is smart to post your picture on the internet with the story of how you went sightseeing in sekret naval warship ?/
stuck411

I’ve seen these ship auctions before. You’re buying a ship that’s stripped of a motor and any, ANY military grade doodads like radar absorbing paneling. You’re buying it for scrap.
- Guest
  
  I’m buying it for the quatloos
  - Ito Kagehisa
    
    You’ll have to outbid my zuleks
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=749833892 Florian Braun
  
  Stop destroying my Bond villain fantasies….
- satn
  
  You’re participating in anti-government beuracratic stupidity.
  
  They spend massive amounts of time and money doing most of the dirty work and then auction off the valuable scrap steel so that someone can recycle it and sell it back to them.
BookGuy

I’m going to buy it and then sell it to Wyoming at a steep mark up. They’ll jump right on it since they never got their aircraft carrier.
Bradley Robinson

Represents a serious upgrade to the canoes Canada’s Navy currently employs.
TotalForge

A sad end for a good ship. In testing, the SS performed brilliantly, roundly defeating all comers. But the Navy is the most tradition bound of all the services, and the prestige of a naval command is based on how many personnel you have reporting to you. Every officer took one look at the Shadow and knew they’d never make Admiral commanding 5-10 sailors. Those same officers would love to have a fleet of these ships for their decisive advantage in combat.
kartwaffles

Let me get this straight: the US Government wants somebody else to PAY for this ship, and then dismantle it on their own dime within 6 months? Bananas. Either dismantle it yourself, or sell it and let the buyer do with it as they please.
miasm

If you win this, please ask Ze Frank to launch her by swinging a rainbow-pooping nyan cat that disintegrates into a cloud of butt-laser firing unicorn-zebras at the ship, rather than the usual exploding magnum of shampers.
phor11

This would be the PERFECT platform for TPB to run their offshore service!
pjcamp

I predict the next time we see it, it will be sailing into the Keys stuffed full of weed.
pebird

Is that the Monitor or the Merrimac?
serpent

My dream was to get rich, buy this ship, paint it in flowers and psychedelic hippie stuff, name it “What Are the Civilian Applications?”, ride it into the Saint Tropez harbor and watch the posh yacht people dropping their jaws to the decks.