Posted on 02/06/2009 6:21:30 AM PST by MyTwoCopperCoins
The future is here: This water-based Imperial Star Destroyer is really the spectacular Swedish Visby-Class corvette, the first operational stealth ship in the world, powered with silent waterjets and made with non-magnetic composite materials.
According to the experts, the corvettes are "electronically undetectable at more than 8 miles in rough seas and at more than 13.5 miles in calm seas". Their creation was an answer to the incursion of foreign submarines in Swedish waters in the mid-eighties.
The corvettes are designed to travel at more than 35 knots in between the many beautiful islands that populate Sweden's shallow coast, thanks to waterjets-made by Rolls-Royce subsidiary Kamewa-that reduce their draft. Their mission will be to quickly patrol their territorial waters while hunting for enemy submarines and other ships.
While I prefer to travel the Swedish coast on a sailing ship, I wouldn't mind getting a quick surf on these things when they enter in service at the end of this year (as they are probably staffed with non-stealth blonde valkyries.)
How can you take pictures of a ship that is supposed to be “invisible”? {:-)
Armaments?
I wish I had more artistic talent - I’d love to draw what one of these beauties would look after our congress-critters porked them up.
Congress is proof of God. How else to take care of those who are incapable of doing work?
I wish I had more artistic talent - I’d love to draw what one of these beauties would look after our congress-critters porked them up.
Congress is proof of God. How else to take care of those who are incapable of doing work?
Poor whales!!! They will never see what hit them.
Shiver me electronic barnicles!
Any particular reason for what looks like a four year old’s paint job?
"Ninja Parade Slips Through Town Unnoticed Once Again"
Yes, it breaks the lines of the ship, so it’ll be harder to spot.
LOL!
I was expecting to see a picture of blue seas. a bow wave and a wake.
That crazy paint job breaks up the outline and confuses the shape of the ship at sea, making her harder to notice and recognise. Similar crazy paint jobs have been used by warships and military transports as far back as WWI.
Except nature, especially the ocean, doesn’t have sharp geometric lines.
Actually, HERE'S the real ship:
But it supposedly works, from articles about it, that I’ve read before... it also works to confuse the observer about the direction the ship is heading.
Another feature of that pattern is that it becomes harder to identify the most vulnerable portions of the ship.
Yes, my understanding is that range and direction determination becomes much harder with that sort of paint job. Normally, one would rely on radar for that data but the stealth technology blocks that. So the enemy starts to depend more on a sailor with binoculars (or similar technology). The paint has some effectiveness in diminishing low-tech methods of observation.
When asked to comment, a famous Swedish actress said, “This new vessel makes my Volvo swell with pride”.
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