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More on the Swedish Stealth Ship
Dr.Knackerator writes "The BBC is running a story on Sweden's new carbon fibre stealth ship, the Visby. As well as being the first stealth ship, it is controlled by 'state-of-the-art computers using a Windows NT operating system'. 'But Kockums and the Swedish Navy deny it could be sabotaged by hackers and say that even if it did they could fall back to traditional steering and navigation'." We had a previous story about this as well.
Zee BBC is roonneeng a stury oon Sveden's noo cerbun feebre-a steelt sheep, zee Feesby. Bork bork bork! Es vell es beeeng zee furst steelt sheep, it is cuntrulled by 'stete-a-ooff-zee-ert cumpooters useeng a Veendoos NT oopereteeng system'. 'Boot Kuckooms und zee Svedeesh Nefy deny it cuoold be-a sebuteged by heckers und sey thet ifee iff it deed zeey cuoold fell beck tu tredeeshunel steereeng und nefeegeshun'." Ve-a hed a prefeeuoos stury ebuoot thees es vell.
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And the Swede's are using traditional stearing in 5...4...3...
Is everyone all of a sudden gunning at the Swedish ships?
Maybe the powers that be saw Tomorrow Never Dies one too many times.
it is controlled by 'state-of-the-art computers using a Windows NT operating system'. '
First off, I am not sure I would call an NT system "state of the art". Next, I have to wonder just why folks are using a commodity platform to perform literally "mission critical" operations in a combat environment. Particularly one whose history of security is dubious at best.
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The m.c. ecsher paint job.
I remember seeing a US stealth ship in Wired I think, it's black and it floats on two pontoons, so that it's sonar signature is reduced... ANyone else know what I'm talking about?
I'd be more worried about it crashing
Sea Shadow
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
This is not the first stealth ship., this is./ ships /ship-sea.html
http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfile
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I think perhaps if you bomb it a bit, it comes apart.
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Well at least James Bond will find that one easier to destroy than the last stealth ship he dealt with, all he would have to do is give it's IP to some script kiddies.
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First off, I am not sure I would call an NT system "state of the art".
Well, the article says the computers are state-of-the-sart, not the operating system.
However, I doubt they're running NT 4.0 in any case. Windows 2000 or Server 2003, most likely, and those are simply not operating systems to be laughed at.
The coolest voice ever.
As well as being the first stealth ship,
No, I'm afraid that that honor goes to Sea Shadow. True, it was only a technology demonstrator, but it WAS the first stealth ship. This Swedish upstart may be the first PRODUCTION stealth ship, but it certainly ain't the first.
That said, lessons from Sea Shadow were incorporated into the Burke class Destroyers. So this isn't even the first 'stealthy' ship out here.
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
Finnish Hamina-class. Maybe not as radical as this ship, but stealth-ship regardless. And packed with high technology.
So what makes this Swedish ship "first stealth-ship", when there are already stealth-ships in use in Finland? And they have been in use for quite some time already.
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If this boat is running anything like the NT systems I used when I was in the army (the Swedish army that is) I'd say it's pretty stable and secure. Windows NT has had quite some time to mature as an operating system and has had most of its bugs fixed by now. Obviously, they won't be connecting these things to the Internet, so no need to worry about hax0rz.
I, for one, welcome our new Swedish Navy Stealth Ship overlords.
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
As your link states, the Sea Shadow is a test craft. The Visby corvette is going to be in active service in the swedish navy.
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Why does every new thing have to have a X in the name? Being in parenthesis, its almost like an after thought.
Maybe it signifies that this ship will also be run by Microsoft software... A Beowulf cluster of X-Boxen!!!
...but it'll be easily spotted by all the outgoing packets coming from the spyware, troyans and virusses "installed" on WinNT!
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The headline is not quite right. First off, the first stealth ship was the U.S. Navy's Sea Shadow, but it is only a technology testbed and demonstrator. This is the first stealth ship to see operational service.
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
The phrase "Where would you like to go today ?" could not be more fitting in this case.. question is, where do you actually end up ?
"We use a secret angle on our Type 23 frigates which enables our ships to reduce their radar signature to an absolute minimum." (emphasis added)
WTF? There are only so many angles in the first place, and can't you just look at the ship to figure it out?
The US has a stealth ship. I read about it in Wired and saw something on TV awhile back on it. The ship is black, floats on 2 pontoons, travels pretty quick, leaves no wake, is black and uses the same stealth technology as the stealth fighter and bomber.
It is housed in the San Fran area and is inside a large barge that can open up to let it out for testing but no one can see it coming and going.
Evolution or ID?
However, the resin used to bind the fibers is much easier to damage & burns easily giving off noxious fumes. Damage control in case of even a minor hit is going to be lots of fun...
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
I was at a job interview recently and those of us who were there being interviewed were chatting about fun jobs we'd like to have.
One of the guys there told us that a friend of his, who had previously worked for an arms company, was being recentltly interviewed for a job at a Formula 1 racing team. When asked what he could tell them about his previous job and how he could use that experience in the job he was interviewing for he repliad that, because of the classified nature of his work he couldn't tell them much about what he had been doing. He could, however, help them to make their racing cars invisible to radar.
No but, yeah but, no but...
I see that you are attacking a lesser third world country. Would you like to
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0 - Hide
--WooooHoooo--
Spend a lot of time hanging around secured naval bases taking measurements of the weaponry?
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So the crew would look something like...
1 Captin
1 First Mate
50 Enlisted To Man Stations
103 System Admins to keep NT's "blue screen of death" from sinking the ship
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In the US Navy, at least, all crewmembers are trained in fire and damage control, for good reason. One ship's entire damage control crew was wiped out in a blast, and nobody else was trained in damage control. The ship survived the experience, though.
Again, in the US Navy, the standard firefighting gear includes an oxygen mask, so the fumes shouldn't be a problem. Treating crewmembers caught in the fumes before they could get their equipment on will probably require some additional training for the medical personnel, though.
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These days if any kind of vehicle gets hit with any kind of major ordnance it's a crater anyway - or in this case, a rapidly filled hole in the water.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Wouldn't that be spelled, "4h0y m4t3y, th4r 5h3 bL0WZ0RZ!"?
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Exactly what USE would these people get out of building such a ship? This seems to me like a completely waste of money. Can you name any recent naval battles in the past 20 years or so that warranted having a stealthed ship that would not be picked up on radar?
And please, i'm not talking about deploying troops or anything like that. This serves basically one purpose for the swedish navy R&D guys = We're bored, look what we did with your money!
Carbon fiber too.. all they need now are some vinyl stripes, a big fartcan muffler, and TYPE-R on the side, and I bet somebody in the states would buy it.
Visby is the capital of Gotland, which is an island off the east coast of Sweden where the (historic) Goths lived. In case you wondered.
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Captain to Engine Room (through the low-tech voice tube): Switch to manual control IMMEDIATELY!
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Named after the person who decided to use NT for the "State of the art" computers.
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Mmmmm. Swedish Stealth Fish.
...on this. The US Navy did experiments with the Sea Shadow in the 80's (see previous posts), but it was determined that too much everyday utility would have to be sacrificed to acheive true stealthiness. However, some of the features of the Sea Shadow were integrated into new convential ships-of-the-line (like the Arleigh Burke-class guided missle destroyers) such as "secret angles" (LOL) that reduce radar signatures. This Swedish ship isn't much more than a large patrol boat. That's not to say that it can't do it's job effectively; however, it's not designed for long-endurance blue water operations. IMHO, the stealth moniker is for public consumption more than anything else. The best seaborne defense is not stealth, but good defensive weapons such as Sea Sparrows and CIWS (Phalanx)
Don't be a looter...and yes, I know that it's spelled with an "A" instead of an "E".
I vish to use a protractor on your steelth wessels!
Most scandinavian fjords are actually found in Norway. ;-)
Never heard of a swedish parrot pining for the fjords, have you?
No sig to see here. Move along.
A submarine isn't a ship, it's a boat.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
The sea shadow was publically revealed in 1993...the prototype for Visby, the "Smyge", was uncovered in 1991...
1986, designstart of "Smyge", publically showned in 1991. it was a testbed/prototype and a smaller littorial craft.
U.S Secretary of Defense William Cohen was demonstrated to it in 1997.
pic
1996, designstart of the Visby class... as of 2004 two of these ships have been delivered, the HMS Visby (2001) and HMS Helsingborg (2003). after 2 years of sea trials they are ready to enter full service.
pic! pic
Ships made out of aluminum are hugely vulnerable to damage from a relatively cheap cruise missile, as proved in the falklands (was that the sheffield? One of you brits or argentines help me out here).
carbon fiber, although lighter and etc etc with the article, will not be able to take much damage at all before it is ineffective, it just won't. I know the *idea* is to be stealthy so you don't take damage, but as soon as you release one shot of anything, your position is out there.
Navies in general are becoming less and less relevant with the advances in air warfare. They are OK until you really have to fight, they are good as offensive platforms with an enemy that has little in the way of ordance they can shoot back with, but as soon as it approaches some sort of even-ness, ships start to lose. The carrier battle group is the last effective sort of naval enterprise for actual *fighting* on any realistic scale, and that is primarily because it has it's own aircap and satellite remote sensing and protector subs set out in a perimeter. And only because they haven't been used in a nuclear environment, once nukes start getting used, well, missiles and nukes are still hard to stop, you lose. Right now, a large enough swarm of much cheaper sea skimming cruise missiles can overload any defenses and inflict significant damage, that is why they are trying hard to get the laser weapons operational. It's interesting to see where this will go, sucks they are doing it though. The planet (very generally speaking, applies to all nations and peoples) is still run by at best a few hundred seriously intelligent and seriously insane megalomaniacs, and all these other millions of people still "follow their orders".
OK, tell me how Sea Sparrows and CIWS will help you sneak up onto a suspected smuggling vessel?
This ship isn't built for offense. Heck, with a fibre glass hull it's not even built for defence. It's a large patrol boat, just like you've theorised. When you're a politically neutral country, with nothing but peaceful nations around you, why would you need anything more?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Hopefully this is the writers silly notion rather than something he was told. A stealth ship 100km away from any navy ship, but running its radar, is just broadcasting its position. (Naval vessels do have radar receivers you know).
Kind of like making a perfectly light absorbing black truck for night usage, then looking around with a giant searchlight!
Actually, you have two planes of angles to work with from the top, and two from the side.
The stealth aircraft have little odd angled "mirror rooms" (for lack of a better words - think a house of horrors hall of mirrors) that temporarily absorb signals, bounce them around a bit and let them out at various angles at various times, which is why they have a signature, but it is a lot like a flock of birds, not an airplane. A ship would probably reflect radar coming from the side into nearby waves and use them for the scattering effect and try to redirect deck waves in a direction other than straight back (thus the non-90 degree angle).
Excellent idea...
Bluff the world... Say you have an invisible navy - no one will be able to disprove it! Everyone will think Sweden is the next superpower...
The fastrack to world peace.
Nevrar
Not only is the predated (by a long shot) by the US Navy Sea Shadow program in the mid-80s (as pointed out by another poster), but also by the French 'La Fayette' stealth frigates (circa 1988). Modified versions of that ship are also in use by both Saudi Arabia and Taiwan.
The BBC article makes two glaring errors in the first paragraph, after which I stopped reading.
1. The U2 is not of a stealth design, unless you consider all gliders as stealth aircraft. The U2 was disigned to fly adjecent to enemy territory, and not over it... which is why the russians had no problems shooting down Gary Powers in one when he "got lost".
2. The SR-71 is the fastest production plane ever built, and travelled at Mach 3+. It was designed to do one thing - go fast. The faster you go, the hotter you get. Good luck keeping a monsterous semi-molten speeding aircraft off of a radar screen, regardless of it's shape.
The "first" stealth aircraft was the F-117 which entered service in the 70's, followed by the B-2 which joined in the early 90's.
To claim otherwise is to talk out of your ass, which is normal for reporters I guess.
..with KNM Skjold. It's a similar vessel built with a similar material. It has a very low radar signature.
:P
:P
A bullet from the norwegian standard issue AG-3 would go straight trough the whole ship
They've also built mine-sweepers out of similar materials, to aviod magnetism setting off mines.
More info on KNM Skjold here.
Only the sweeds would go with NT
computers let you make more mistakes faster, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila.
And, the USS Ranger became "The Danger Ranger";
Kitty Hawk became "The SHITTY KITTY"
USS Brooke was nicknamed "The Broke-dick Brooke", since she reputedly was always having problems getting underway...
Ahh, the affectionate names we came up for our ships.
My first ship was the USS Flint (AE-32), an ammo ship, named after Flint, Michigan. Many ammo ships have names like Pyro, Haleakala, etc. We nicknamed ours "Flexible Flint", since our then-CO, a Commander, was charging hard for Rear Admiral. Seems we got volunteered for almost anything ServGru One in Alameda had going.
My second ship was USS John A. Moore (FFG-19), nicknamed "The Jammin' John", since we seemed to charge hard for stuff. Our main space seemed to be spiffy, and that might be why, when as a NRF (Naval Reserve Force) ship, we were selected for advanced deployment to the Gulf in Nov 1987, from a pool of several other FFGs. But, we were given official notice maybe July. We got there.
But, remember the Yorktown, which, while using winbloze NT, went broke-dick in the Atlantic and had to be towed in disgrace, thanks to a divide by zero error. Has to STILL be embarassing for the USN.
As for finding the stealth ship... Just fly some RPV (drones) that drop or spew their own dronelets. Build a mesh over the target area. Anything that moves is going to be found, even small wave caps. Same principle as to how the stealth planes over Iraq were detected years ago: A bunch (or few) innocuous cell phone towers were built in strategic locations. The towers were sort of like inverse radars: Always on, but any aircraft passing thru created disruptions in the "mesh", giving away the location of the low-flying aircraft.
If enough "mesh-making" dronelets are spewed over an op area, NO navy, not even the vaunted USN would stay invisible except in the presence of extremely foul weather and the absence of aircraft or RORSAT. Maybe the subs would be the only hard-to-detect ships, but blue-green laser and other improvements might upset that advantage in some scenarios.
David Syes
"TAO" (not the real one, just the nick-named one, due to my on-the-spot scenarios, such as: "Why do the Russians need to TORPEDO a carrier? Why not just swarm-lob low-yield nukes in the direction of the carriers, warp the flight deck, and make it tough for aloft birds to land. A CV without a flight deck is almost USEless..."
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The link referenced in the /. article seems to be dead, but Google found it's new location.