This Jet-Inspired Experimental Stealth Ship Was Built In Secret 40 Years Ago

The Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk Stealth Fighter isn't just one of the most iconic warplanes America has ever flown; it, along with the larger B-2 Stealth Bomber, would go on to become American cultural icons. Inspired in large part by these military planes, the name 'Stealth' became quite fashionable in the 1990s and has been used on everything from golf clubs to the short-lived Dodge sports car. 

But beyond those consumer products, did you know there was also an experimental, Stealth-inspired warship? One that didn't just look like the Stealth fighter jet, but was designed to operate like one, too. Just look at the photo above. That's not an AI-generated image from the prompt 'turn the F-117 Stealth Fighter into a boat' — that's a real photograph of a real vessel called the IX-529 Sea Shadow floating in the San Francisco Bay. 

The strange, yet somehow instantly recognizable ship was built by DARPA during the 1980s, and though the Sea Shadow never got beyond the testing phase, it nonetheless helped shape subsequent advances in American warship technology. Like the Stealth Fighter and Stealth Bomber themselves, the Sea Shadow had a look that's still futuristic today, even though the design is well over 40 years old — and that's just part of what makes it so fascinating.

The Sea Shadow wasn't simply inspired by the aesthetic shape of the F-117 Nighthawk's iconic airframe – the ship's development was spurred by the famed Lockheed Skunk Works itself. Ben Rich of the Skunk Works initially proposed that the F-117's radar-evading concepts could be applied to submarines to avoid enemy sonar. Eventually, the idea evolved to adapting the Stealth design to a surface vessel to see how exposure to seawater would impact radar-absorbing surfaces.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) took on the contract to build the experimental ship, which came to be known as the Sea Shadow. With all this being done during the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the Sea Shadow was built under extreme secrecy inside a barge in the San Francisco Bay. And when the ship began sea trials in 1981, things didn't go too well. The Sea Shadow made a large, unmissable wake that was anything but stealthy, and the culprit was found to be motor propellers that were installed backwards. 

Once that problem was addressed, the Sea Shadow continued testing through the mid-1980s, eventually proving the basic capabilities of Stealth design at sea. It wasn't, however, until in 1993, after the Cold War had ended, that the general public got its first view of the ship, with its distinct angled surfaces and fighter jet profile. Both of which were designed that way to avoid Soviet-era X-band satellite radar.

Ultimately, the Sea Shadow never made it beyond the testing phases, which isn't surprising since the vessel was built to be a testbed in the first place. For a period, the 'Stealth Ship' was displayed by the Navy during special events and could even be toured by the public. And though it would have been awesome to see the formerly top-secret vessel end up as a permanent museum ship somewhere, the Sea Shadow would end up being scrapped in 2006. 

The cost and time of the project were far from a waste for DARPA and the Navy, though. Not only did the Sea Shadow become a floating promotional piece in its later years, lessons learned from the development and testing of the ship would also end up being used for future naval stealth technology.  For example, techniques from the Sea Shadow experiment were used during the development of modern submarine periscopes, and more notably, for the U.S. Navy's Zumwalt-class guided missile destroyers.

While further construction of Zumwalt-class ships have been canceled by the Navy due to ballooning costs, these destroyers remain one of the most advanced and distinct-looking warships on earth. And the next time you see one, you can trace at least some of that look to the strange and fascinating Sea Shadow of the Cold War era.