Stealth Supercavitation Boat

Thought some of you might find this interesting. A supercavitation stealth boat designed to form a sort of warp bubble around pontoons underwater.

http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2012/06/21/juliet-marines-ghost-ship-emerges-from-stealth-startup-gears-up-for-war/?single_page=true%E2%80%9D

 

Interesting, t is like a swath using supercavitating torpedoes. Bet they still have a lot of work to do on it. It is much easier to build SC torpedo than something that breaks thru the surf while traveling high speed. Also making it go fast consumes fuel, it has to be light. Fuel is in torpedoes.

 

Looks like fun, until one hits a whale or a partly-submerged shipping container.

 

http://julietmarine.com/images/Juliet-Marine-GHOST-Ad-11-1.pdf

 

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It's been rumored for some time that Team Hydroptere has been working on or has developed a system to spot objects just below the surface in time to avoid them at 50+ knots. A sailing hydrofoil pretty much must have such a system sailing in todays ocean-and they're getting ready for a trans-pac record....... True or not somebody-maybe this guy-will do it.

 

No different than the collision possibilities with a pod drive, so I think the market has decided that risk is acceptable, at least for pleasure craft.

 

"..The question is, does it really work?..."

Er...nope.

This type of system has been tried before. They all work well in model scale, but not full scale. Also slow boats like the big bulk carriers that use the Japanese systems have some minor improvements, but their Froude number is low. They call it WAIP http://www.rand-engineering.co.jp/e/waip.htm

I know of a high-speed passenger ferry that had a similar system installed, with the same claims..and surprise surprise, nope, doesn't work. If you ignore the grandstanding and hype and look at the practicalities, simple physics will tell you its littered with major hurdles to overcome which appear to be given scant regard.

The Japanese have a similar thing (as do many others), but no claims with air/bubble injection to obtain crazy speeds, theirs is called the resonance free SWATH, or RFS.



Their claims of a 40,000 tonne container type vessel doing 40knots in significant wave heights up to 9.0m!

 

That could be ruled out on air drag alone I'd have thought.

 

The problem is pods have to develop lift since air bubble causes loss of displacement. You have stability issues. Works similar to hydrofoil, design idea is for doing 100 MPH plus.

 

Good observations.

But it's being "taught" how to fly, bit by bit...and it's starting to.

 

Johnny Quest would be jealous.

 

I like the line about "can be launched from any beach", at 60k lbs? Sounds a bit optimistic.

Isn't this type mission why helicopters were invented? Fast, maneuverable, decent payload, stable weapons platform.

 

Im getting worried about this forum and the posts.

Supercavitating torpedoes is as old as the hills but they hardly need stealth, there would not be anything you could do even if you saw it coming.

The underwater noise of supercavitation or just cavitation is like an under water bomb. Modern subs would be able to hear that a thousand miles away.

 

the CHARC lives! This is going to be a great product one of these days. Lots of moving parts but this thing should be able to do an awful lot.

The next logical step for this transformer is to add a ekranoplan mode.