fast ship in world

Mighty Ships

Alright, I am another one of those who like ships. With so many different kinds of ships to be seen I had a field day during our cruise through Helsinki harbour. The one below, for example, is a ship that is not easily detected even inside a harbour basin because it is so well camouflaged. I had to look twice before I eventually spotted it.

Fast Attack Craft

The Gray Monk has told me that this kind of ship is called a Fast Attack Craft. Her raked superstructure deflects radar so that she will have a smaller signature on radar than a normal craft of her size. The idea is to make her appear less threatening and allow her to get in real close to launch missiles or torpedoes. As often before I wonder at how much creativity goes into the design of destructive weapons.

Opposite her in the harbour was moored the German Frigate BREMEN. Her main task is to fight U-boats but she is equally well equipped to fight aircrafts and other ships as well. She doesn't look it but she is 130 m long and her top speed is 30 knots. She carries along a crew of 219 men. I cannot imagine where they all fit in, must be a bit of a squeeze. Pity, we couldn't get on board and have a closer look around.

Frigate BREMEN with the coat of arms of the City of Bremen (a big key) visible on her bow

Another breathtaking sight on our cruise was the group of icebreakers basking in the sunshine at their summer mooring place enjoying the warmth no doubt. They must be pretty busy in winter keeping the passage from Helsinki to Tallin in Estland free of ice. These icebreakers are designed to break up an ice layer of up to five meters! Amazing, isn't it? I'd like to sail on an icebreaker myself one of these days, just once, in winter of course ...

The mighty URHO and her five sisters

The next turn to starboard brought us back into the harbour basin and our cruise to an end. What a way to start the day ...sigh...

Orphaned Ship Looks for Sugar Daddy

What happens when the military builds an innovative new ship that is built within budget and on schedule? Nothing, and that’s the problem. The Pentagon’s now-shuttered Office of Force Transformation paid M Ship in San Diego to build the Batman-esque craft, called Stiletto, as an experiment in all-carbon shipbuilding. The stealthy, fast ship seemed a natural for special operations, and possibly as an alternative to the very troubled Littoral Combat Ship, the Navy’s new shallow-water ship.

Everyone seems to like the 89-ft., 60-ton Stiletto. But thanks to the Pentagon’s archaic weapons-buying system, no one has the money to pay for it. So M Ship is following a time-honored tradition of looking for friends in Congress, as Roxana Tiron of The Hill reports:

Several months ago, M Ship Co. hired Duane Morris Government Affairs to raise its profile on Capitol Hill. The goal for this year is to secure $1.5 million in research and development funds in the defense authorization and appropriations bills to study the use of the M-hull design for a littoral combat-type scenario. That money would go towards designing a ship in less than a year. Ultimately, the company’s goal is to have a steady funding line starting in fiscal 2009, company executive director and co-founder Bill Burns said.

The current Stiletto platform could be doubled or tripled and can be used as an actual Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) or for a variety of ships complementing the Navy’s prized LCS.

Given the troubled state of the Pentagon’s other ship programs, Congress may well be agreeable to support a company that claims to have innovative (and affordable) technology.

First Littoral Combat Ship to be Commisioned – Freedom (LCS-1)

This coming Saturday the U.S. Navy will be commissioning its first Littoral Combat Ship, USS Freedom (LCS-1), in a ceremony at Veterans Park in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Freedom is the first of ‘a new family of ships for the US Navy’. The U.S. Department of Defense tells us in a

A fast, agile, and high-technology surface combatant, Freedom will be a platform for launch and recovery of manned and unmanned vehicles. Its modular design will support interchangeable mission packages, allowing the ship to be reconfigured for antisubmarine warfare, mine warfare, or surface warfare missions on an as-needed basis. The LCS will be able to swap out mission packages pierside in a matter of days, adapting as the tactical situation demands. These ships will also feature advanced networking capability to share tactical information with other Navy aircraft, ships, submarines and joint units.

Freedom is an innovative combatant designed to operate quickly in shallow water environments to counter challenging threats in coastal regions, specifically mines, submarines and fast surface craft. The LCS is capable of speeds in excess of 40 knots and can operate in water less than 20 feet deep.

Ships Of The Future – LCS, Littoral Combat Ship

Popular Science brings us Future Navy Ships – Littoral Combat Ship. They write:

This is a small, fast ship (capable of 45 knots) for sub-hunting, mine-clearing, and fighting small boats near coastlines—the littoral region. Each LCS would be equipped with one of three distinct mission modules: a set of plug-and-play ship sensors, missiles, small boats, unmanned underwater vehicles and specially equipped helicopters, for mine warfare, anti-submarine warfare or surface combat. The base configuration would include antimissile batteries and a medium-caliber gun. The ships could clear mines and chase subs away from an area before the rest of the fleet arrived.

Super-Fast Ship Set for Drug War Duty

in the war on drugs: The Stiletto ship, an experimental design that’s garnered lots of praise but little in the way of traditional Pentagon backing during its development.

InsideDefense.com yesterday broke the news, though, that the ship is getting readied for its real-world debut.

The ship will leave its port at Norfolk, VA, at the end of May and arrive at the northern Colombian port city of Cartagena in early June, making four or five stops on its way south, according to Cdr. James Hruska, the
Stiletto project officer in the Pentagon’s Rapid Reaction Technology Office. . . .

Due to its shallow draft of merely 2.5 feet, the ship can maneuver very close to coastlines. And with a top speed of over 50 knots,
Stiletto could easily “outrun” the boats used by drug smugglers, Hruska said.

Stiletto will be unarmed, though; so, what is it good for?

The ship can launch a Rigid-hull Inflatable Boat, enabling the boarding of vessels at sea, Hruska said.

Stiletto officials want to use an experimental unmanned aerial vehicle called “Silver Fox” onboard the Stiletto during the planned operations in South America, Hruska told InsideDefense.com.
But the manufacturer, Advanced Ceramics Research of Tucson, AZ, had not yet agreed to loan the Pentagon a drone for the mission, he added.

One thing it cannot do, however, is find the crude submarines that are becoming increasingly popular among drug runners; Stiletto does not have a sonar system.