Trimarans and the BladeRunner...

Great flashback there...the "Sea Viking" surface-effect-ship, or SWCM.

The choice of that platform option was not influenced by lobbyists or plus-up earmark money, in fact. Quite the contrary...it was chosen for certain attributes that the community that would operate it decided were valuable.

Fast forwarding just a little bit to ca. 1983-4...with Rohr's demise and the halt of the SWCM program, a complete digital ride control package (the first ever "production" version; all previous incarnations were R&D prototpypes) remained built but undelivered. By pure chance of luck and confluence of the stars, a prototype SES passenger ferry built and under test in Norway was found to be in desparate need of a ride control system.

And so began a long and fruitfull relationship with the Norwegians and their SES' that continues to this day..30 years later.

I guess I will have to take your word for it as I was not anywhere near that program at that time. It just seems to me when I read the latter part of that report that Rohr corp got that contract via some 'insider deal',.....

The next rumor we heard through the Squadron grapevine was that the boat was over weight and the weapon systems and major electronics had not yet been installed. What we did not realize until months after the initial weight rumors floated out was only the boat’s hull had been completed and no engines or other significant equipment had been installed. We later learned that the weight of the hull alone far exceeded the total fully outfitted design weight (8).

Then we saw her during a drill weekend training operation down in South Bay on a sunny afternoon. Forlorn, pier side, almost hidden in a backwater at the 32nd Street Naval Station, we were shocked to see how incomplete the large, ugly, dull, aluminum hulk was. We (officers and enlisted men) were all under the impression much more construction had been completed. We recognized immediately she was cursed and gave her the cruel but apt nick name of “Sea Brick” in stark contrast to her semi-official name of “Sea Viking.” Though the Sea Brick held a perverse fascination for us in the boat units (12 and 13), we had no strong desire to leap aboard and explore this sorry shell. While we in SBU-13 would take little side trips during our South Bay training ops to view her, I don’t recall anyone taking pictures or going on board, which would not have been hard on a Saturday or Sunday. This was fairly surprising knowing what an adventurous lot most of us were in the Boat Units with all the shutter bugs in our ranks including myself. It was readily apparent a lot of money had been squandered. With no powerful triumvirate of congressional, military and industrial support like that behind the V-22 Osprey who would spend even more obscene amounts of the nation’s treasure to try to make an elephant fly or even get behind a new functional design. We could all see we were going to be stuck with the PB’s for some time to come.

We finally heard the Sea Brick hulk was eventually towed up to Point Hueneme and used as a target. I think one or a few of the guys actually saw her up there dockside waiting to be towed out on a missile range. However, her cursed legacy had even farther reaching effects, than denying our generation a new patrol craft.

Historically most patrol boats were constructed at ELCO on the East Coast or Higgins Industries in Louisiana. Many of the Vietnam era boats were constructed by yards in Louisiana. The SWCL’s and PB’s were built in Washington State. This is not to grant a perpetual license to the older yards at the expense of start ups, but you have to wonder about awarding a contract to a yard that has no track record.



......insider deal like I think the M-ship program likely got started??

Lets see , who was that Congressman from out in that Navy area of Calf that got convicted of improprieties with respect to defense contracts?
Duke Cunningham

Simply put..no. M-Ships craft was indeed was an "inside deal"..a boat that came out of nothing but connections. Not to imply that there have not been more than a few of those..of course, there have been.

Rohr was actually in the running as a finalist in the bidding for the 3KSES frigate....the large-scale SES progrm that preceded the SWCM by almost a decade.

OK..or not. I still regularly sit down to dinner with those who were..those still with us, that is.

P.S.: the source you constantly reference is/was remarkably (or perhaps "limitedly" is a kinder term) uninformed and even more remarkably biased. But to be fair about it..that's about par for the course in this industry, isn't it? When we were working with the Smyge and designing the Swedish YSM200 SES Corvette, there were some in that navy that also had some very long knives out for anything that was not a "conventional"monohull frigate solution.

So it seems to go..everywhere.

Oh well, I'll just let that subject go for now. I only brought it up after I read that WarBoats.org report.

I was really going back to look for other Sea Knife information that I had never found when I made my first postings on that vessel. I'll post some of that when I get a bit more organized with the info.

Have you, in your searches, come across anything about Peter's "Wave Strider" too?



And if it makes the ending of the Rohr SWCM story any easier to digest....many (including myself) believe that its premature demise was a blessing in disguise; the design had taken on so much weight that it's performance would have been mediocre at best and just plain awfull at worst. SES designs simply don't have much margin for error when it comes to weight management.

I haven't seen mention made of a 'Wave Strider' ?

In this paper I saw mention of the FICATs (Favorable Interference CATamaran), and the Gayle boats
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a081325.pdf

...and in his patent paper I saw a quite different version (sort of a tri-hull configuration) of his idea that had no specific name if I recall.....below

....the Gayle boats...another 'multihull' theme

In those pictures the ride looks great but give it some waves and it gets bad.

Look at this video National Geographic Inside 21st Century Warship CONVERT 720p HDTV x264 MoTv - YouTube

Look at the 21:08 point in the video and she is really rolling doing the "vomit comet" type of movement. Not very comfortable.

I know there are planes fore and aft on the center hull but I do not know if they are actively controlled. It obviously could do with a much more aggressive roll control to decouple that pitch and roll movement.

http://www.3dmodels.co/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/USS-Independence_05.jpg

I'm sorry, but I don't see this as excessive motion for a ship at sea.

Certainly it interfered with their launching that experimental detection equipment, but get aboard a conventional destroyer in a good sea and see what 'motion' is all about.

There is a new variant of this LCS design out there now,....referred to as a frigate now...
http://www.defensenews.com/articles...vy-still-searching-for-path-to-a-bigger-fleet

Some interesting old stuff on this subject thread.
https://www.yachtforums.com/threads/trimarans-and-the-bladerunner.2701/page-7

BMcF, are you still around?
https://www.yachtforums.com/threads/trimarans-and-the-bladerunner.2701/page-7#post-42853