|
Department: General Catamaran News
HSV:One Quick Cat  Lease arrangement lets the U.S. military test an Australian-built, high speed catamaran.
Article by Bill Kraczor,
The Associated Press
.
Aboard the Joint Venture -- It took only minutes for this giant, water-jet propelled catamaran to overtake and then run circles around 4 navy minehunting ships steaming in a line through the gulf of mexico.
At 45 knots -52MPH- this is one quick cat. "It has characteristics that are unlike any ship that we have in this fleet," said Navy Cmdr. Phiol Beierl, the Joint Venture's commanding officer. "In many ways it behaves like an airplane."
Military officials want to know if a high-speed vessel,or HSV, could improve upon conventional ships -in some cases airplanes- for missions that include mine warfare, special operations, homeland security, humanitarian evacuation and the shipment of troops and cargo.
To find out, they have leased the 313-foot Joint Venture, a former car and passenger ferry,built 3 yrs ago in Australia where it operated as the DevilCat and later as the Topcat on a route in New Zealand.
During a December mine warfare exercise off Panama City Beach in Florida's Panhandle, the Joint Venture served as the command and control ship for Capt. Rick Rush, commander of Mine Countermeasures Squadron 2, based at Ingleside Naval Station, Texas.
Rush said it also may be suitable for ferrying fuel and supplies to the slow moving minehunting ships and serve as a launching platform for helicopters and small, mine-detecting robot submarines. "Maybe we want to use the high speed to go in, drop off some unmanned vehicles, put them in the water and then scoot back out to the sea in safe water," he said. "There's a lot of promise in doing things more stealthily."
The Army, which operates its own cargo vessels, joined with the Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and Tampa based U.S. Special Operations Command to charter the Joint Venture, designated HSV X-1 for experimental high-speed vessel. It does not have USS in its name because it is a leased ship.
The Joint Venture is twice to four times as fast as existing vessels and can carry at least 422 tons of cargo at a sustained speed of 35 knots for 1,110 nautical miles. Like an airplane, however, its speed, range and capacity are interrelated. When one goes up the other goes down.
"It's a trade-off, and that kind of load management is not something typically that we have to do on our cargo ships," Beierl said.
The aviation analogy continues in the pilot house. Instead of a ship's wheel, the Joint Venture is steered with a joy stick. It is highly maneuverable, capable of making sharp 90 degree turn at full speed and stopping in three ship lengths. Speed is an obvious advantage for getting troops and cargo, including tanks and other heavy equipment, into battle zones or extracting civilians from trouble spots, but the Joint Venture has other benefits.
The Army-Navy-Marine crew is relatively small at 30. Its shallow draft of only 12 feet and swiveling vehicle ramp mean the Joint Venture can access five times as many ports as conventional cargo ships, said John Woodhouse, a spokesman for the Navy Warfare Development Command.
|