Title: Page born: April 01 2002

Sea Shadow

There is a boat the Skunk Works developed shortly after the F-117A. It is called the "Sea Shadow" and was built in 27 months and operated secretly in the late 1980 for $200 million dollars.

The Sea Shadow was first unveiled on April 9, 1993. The barge used for the program was the Hughes Mining Barge (HMB-1), a vessel was originally built for a secret CIA project in the early '70s, and had been in mothballs for years. The CIA project, it has since come out, was an attempt to recover a Soviet nuclear sub that sank off the coast of Hawaii in 1968. The prodject included two ships, the Gossimir Explorer which was basically a ship capable of deep Sea mining, and the HMB-1 which actually submerged under the Gosimir Explorer. The HMB-1 had a claw to retreive the USSR submarine, which was operated by the drill on the Gossimir Explorer. (The operation was partially successful with half of the ill-fated Soviet sub and crew being brought up from the ocean bottom.) The Sea Shadow's stats are: Length: 160 ft. Width: 68 ft. Draft: 14.5 ft. Displacement: 560 tons (full load).

According to the sketchy history released by the Navy, construction of the Sea Shadow took place inside the barge, apparently between 1983 and '85 at Redwood City Calif. Night tests were conducted in 1985 and '86 off the Santa Cruz Islands in Southern California., with the barge keeping the ship under cover for repairs and replenishment during daylight. The tests were suspended in 1986 and not resumed until spring 1993, when the ship was unveiled. In late 1994 the testing concluded in the San Francisco Bay and the Sea Shadow and Hughes Mining Barge were moved to San Diego and were docked at the 32nd Street pier.

In May 1999, the Sea Shadow was reactivated by the Navy for a 5 year program in order to "research future ship engineering concepts and to serve as a host vessel for companies to demonstrate advanced naval technologies." The Sea Shadow is currently operation out of San Francisco Bay.

Sea Shadow Links

July 1993 Popular Mechanics article	LMCO Photo Archive
US Navy Fact File	LMCO Page about Sea Shadow. (With movies)
1999 Lockheed article	US Navy Archive including 1999 photo

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