The World's First Supercavitating Boat?

An anonymous reader writes "For decades, researchers have been trying to build boats, submarines, and torpedoes that make use of supercavitation — a bubble layer around the hull that drastically reduces friction and enables super-fast travel. Now a company in New Hampshire called Juliet Marine Systems has built and tested such a craft, and says it is the world's fastest underwater vehicle. The ship, called the 'Ghost,' looks like two supercavitating torpedoes with a command module on top, and can carry 18 people plus weapons and supplies. The company is in talks with the U.S. Navy to build a version of the ship that can guard the fleet against swarm attacks by small boats. The question is how well it really works, and whether it can be used reliably and effectively on the high seas."

Comments

So fast it outran the Link !

[sl4shd0rk]

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/juliet-marine-systems-inc-announces-the-first-super-cavitating-ship-ghost-127461283.html

Re:So fast it outran the Link !

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because stink is propagated via much nimbler particles, known as pewtrinos, often the result of latrino decay.

Re:A boat?

[gstoddart]

Since when is a 'underwater craft' referred to as a 'boat'? A USN Submariner friend of mine affectionately calls his submarine a 'boat' sometimes, but come on /.!

That's because

Submarines are usually referred to as "boats" rather than as "ships", regardless of their size."

A sub is always a boat. Navies have always called them boats, that's why your submariner friend calls it that.

You might not like it, but "boat" is the correct term.

Probably not very useful

[Lev13than]

This type of boat is probably too limited in usefulness to be adopted by the navy. In terms of R&D capabilities it feels a lot like the experiments from the 1960s to develop militarized hydrofoils - the Canadian HMCS Bras d'Or being one good example. Despite impressive stability and speeds in excess of 60 knots (70mph), the limited load capacity and range made the prototypes unsuitable for military use.

The biggest hit, however, was the introduction of missiles. The difference between 20 and 30 knots isn't all that important when you're defending against a Sea Sparrow running at 500 mph. In WWII there were lots of destroyers running in excess of 35 knots. Now it's just the nuke-powered ACs that do top speeds, and everyone else is more worried about conserving fuel.

That means the proposed boat is really just a replacement for patrol vessels or stealth assault craft, and it doesn't look like the advantages of the design outweigh the compromises in handling, noise, carrying capacity and cost.