Navy special operators test advanced high-speed craft.

• Author: Kennedy, Harold
• Position: United States. Navy

The U.S. Navy is putting through its paces a sleek, fast, shallow-draft technology demonstrator that promises to reduce crew and passenger injuries caused by a combination of speed and choppy water. Current craft operating in comparable conditions have a mishap rate approaching 50 percent.

SEALION, short for SEAL insertion, observation and neutralization, is a test bed for examining technologies for transporting special operations forces on combat missions, explained Michael D. Anslow, assistant program manager at the combatant craft department of the Naval Surface Warfare Center's Carderock division. The vessel was designed by Anslow's department, which is headquartered at Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek, Va.

It is a multi-mission, high-speed, low-signature boat, intended for a variety of missions, such as covert delivery and extraction of a Navy SEAL team to and from a hostile beach, mine identification and deactivation, clandestine surveillance, reconnaissance and target interdiction.

SEALION was developed under a program called ship and force architecture concepts, Anslow told National Defense. The actual work was done by an integrated product team made up of representatives from Carderock, the boat's planned user--the Naval Special Warfare Command--and the builder, Oregon Iron Works, a metals manufacturing company in Clackamas, Ore.

In many respects, it is similar to the Alligator boat the company sold to the Israeli Army a decade ago, and the Mark V Special Operations Craft, the boat currently used for such missions.

There are, however, significant differences, Anslow said. Both the Alligator and the Mark V have open stern decks, while the SEALION is enclosed entirely. "That keeps the crew and passengers out of the weather--no heat, cold, rain or enemy fire," Anslow said. It also allows occupants to move about the boat without being watched by observers.

The SEALION is all aluminum. It is 71 feet long, 11 feet shorter than the Mark V, enabling the SEALION to fit on to a C-17 Globemaster air transport. The Mark V requires a C-5 Galaxy, which is larger and needs a longer runway to take off.

The Navy has 20 Mark Vs, divided into 10 detachments. Each detachment consists of two craft and two deployment-support packages mounted on cargo transporters. The detachment can be delivered rapidly by two C-5s or by a surface ship with a well or flight deck, or one with appropriate cranes and deck space. Each detachment can deploy within as...