Maritech wave-piercing hull may be proposed for arsenal ship
by John Bosma
Defense Daily / April 12, 1996
A radical new monohull being developed under the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency MARITECH (Maritime Technology) program may be proposed for the Navy/DARPA "arsenal ship" program, according to industry officials.
According to a program source, a high-speed wave-piercing MARITECH monohull from an industry team of General Dynamics' Bath Iron Works Div. and Norway's Kvaerner-Masa Marine may be an entrant in the arsenal ship design competition. For MARITECH, the BIW/KMM team has studied a 43,000-ton, 800- foot wave-piercer carrying 20,000 tons of containers.
The wave-piercer concept originated from KMM's Finnish yards, where it has undergone extensive tank and open-water testing. The wave-piercer is a very slender hull with a knifelike bow that slices through waves rather than riding over them, as more heavily constructed bows on conventional ships are designed to do.
KMM calls the wave-piercer "breakthrough technology." It says wave-piercer cargo liners could run efficiently at 30-35 knots, using 120,000 shaft horsepower, in transatlantic winter seas, considered the industry's benchmark for the toughest operating conditions. Even higher speeds are possible with more horsepower.
By contrast, today's containerships now run 23-25 knots, with the latest containerships reaching 27 knots. Industry experts say that over 50 percent of transatlantic containership crossings run behind schedule, mostly due to weather.
These speed figures suggest that a wave-piercer arsenal ship would be faster than most Navy surface ships. The low crew manning that the Navy seeks for arsenal ships would mesh with the sharply reduced crews required by modern commercial vessels.
MARITECH is a five-year, $220 million DARPA/Department of Commerce-Maritime Administration program to improve U.S. shipbuilding processes and ship design. It comes under the Clinton administration's five-year National Shipbuilding Initiative, begun in FY 94.
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