Sea Wraith

Great Britain's shipbuilder,Vosper Thorneycroft LTD, has offered plans to the British Navy for a stealthy corvette class ship called the "Sea Wraith". The Sea Wraith's asymmetric towers, movable mast, wave-piercing bow, and several other innovative features will make it one of the stealthiest and deadliest ships afloat. "Sea Wraith" will utilize a radar absorbing composite superstructure and deflecting angled design to achieve stealth. High speed electric motors will make it very quiet.

Sea Wraith will take stealth a step further, using artificially generated mist to disguise it as a patch of fog. This cloud of mist would visually mask the ship. At the same time, it would prevent infrared sensors from detecting "hot" spots created by the ship's powerplant or recently fired weapons.

I remember reading about this in "A ship that fools. (Sea Wraith, British stealth war ship)" Popular Science, April, 1997 by Bill Sweetman

Anyone have any new news about this?

Originally posted by SwitchbladeNGC

Anyone have any new news about this?

It's the first I've heard of it, but I imagine that if they have been built, it would be hushed up. Stealth is at it's greatest when the enemy don't know you even exist.

I'll go link digging though, try to find some more information.

Hope it could be a trimaran ship. I like to see one such ship. I always dreamed of an aircraft carrier with that type of design as well.

Originally posted by deltaboy
Hope it could be a trimaran ship. I like to see one such ship. I always dreamed of an aircraft carrier with that type of design as well.

No that was the FSC, or future surface combatant, which was a fantastic prject. BUT a certain minister of the government decided it wasnt worth spending money on....

Originally posted by devilwasp

Originally posted by deltaboy
Hope it could be a trimaran ship. I like to see one such ship. I always dreamed of an aircraft carrier with that type of design as well.

No that was the FSC, or future surface combatant, which was a fantastic prject. BUT a certain minister of the government decided it wasnt worth spending money on....

Thanks for the correction. Its too bad it wasn't worth being applied. Don't know how far the U.S. Navy is interested in this design.

However the pic that is included is indeed a SeaWraith design corvette which was the concept.

But...there are some pics of a SeaWraith 2 that is far different from the trimaran design so it may be that design they are talking about.

defence-data.com...

Pic included

Originally posted by deltaboy
However the pic that is included is indeed a SeaWraith design corvette which was the concept.

I thought this was the Sea Wraith

Hmm, I haven't come across this before either but it seems like a fantastic idea.

Since the article SwitchbladeNGC is a decade old now, is it possible that this has been cancelled/indefinitely shelved?

defence-data.com...

the RV Triton is the only ship i know of attached to the royal navy thats a trimaran

The Sea Wraith project was an in house project. Vosper did a fair amount of work on it but the MoD didn't need a new ship at the time and it was expensive.

Popular Mechanics or Science did an article on it in the mid '90s. It was pretty cool. Asymetric masts, fog generator, ECM which can mimic the radar signature any other ship and a UAV cataplut. Tons of cool features.

Originally posted by deltaboy
Don't know how far the U.S. Navy is interested in this design.

It looks very similar to the Independence-class Littoral Combat Ship. Maybe the U.S. Navy did like it.

The trimaran is not the Sea Wraith but this is:


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The Sea Wraith looks remarkably similar to the Type 45 Destroyer. Were they separate design concepts or did the Type 45 Destroyer come from the Sea Wraith?

why do you say the sea wraith looks like the type 45, can't see it myself. One thing to note is that the type 45's have the seamist system installed. It is modified from the NBC washdown system and is apparently very successful in hiding the ship from infra red threats.

On another note, the Sustained Surface Combatant Capability (S2C2) Pathfinder delivered its report at the end of april into the future of the surface fleet (was looking at what was needed to replace the type 22/23's and hunt and sandown classes). I have the info on what they found, and will type into a thread here when i get the chance.



[edit on 11-5-2007 by paperplane_uk]

Originally posted by paperplane_uk
why do you say the sea wraith looks like the type 45, can't see it myself.

Type 45



Sea Wraith


Both have the dual asymmetric towers, Helicopter pad in the back, single gun in the front, appear to be roughly the same size (and serve the same purpose).

Differences include that the Sea Wraith appears to be less "cluttered", and the bow of the ships are different. As I said, it looks similar, not the same.

The Sea Wraith was a concept design, showing what could be done with unlimited finds.

The Type-45 is a direct descendant and is the actual design that grew out of the concept.

EDIT: Sea Wraith 2 is a different project, but follows on from what was learnt from Sea Wraith...

[edit on 11/5/07 by stumason]

Originally posted by stumason
The Sea Wraith was a concept design, showing what could be done with unlimited finds.

The Type-45 is a direct descendant and is the actual design that grew out of the concept.

EDIT: Sea Wraith 2 is a different project, but follows on from what was learnt from Sea Wraith...

[edit on 11/5/07 by stumason]

The type 45 is in no way a direct descendant of the sea wraith. The type 45 (a BAE systems design, with heavy Input from BMT defence services) was already being designed when the sea wraith concept (an unsoliceted design by Vospers and sent to the MOD without their asking) was published. The design history of the type 45 comes from the Horizon project.

Indeed... Seems the several sources about the Sea Wraith I have read were quite wrong. In fact, I do know the Horizons Project and mentioned it in the Type-45 thread that was here last year, showing where it came from, so I really don't know why I forgot all that and trusted the interweb.....

I must be getting old and have lost some brain cells....

The Horizon project was in conjunction with France and Italy, wasn't it?