Sea Blade
The Lockheed Martin LCS Team unveiled Sea Blade, an Advanced Semi-Planing Seaframe, for the Navy's Littoral Combat Ship program on April 15, 2003.
The Sea Blade concept proposed by the Lockheed Martin LCS Team builds on the hydrodynamic lineage of a U.S.-designed hullform that holds the trans-Atlantic speed record and has been successfully adapted to much larger high-speed European commercial transports. The Sea Blade concept is larger than the original hullform, but smaller than the transports, which reduces design and construction risks in the new seaframe.
The Team selected the Sea Blade concept over more than a dozen others based on extensive analysis, which included participation on three of the Navy's six Focused Mission Ship Studies and a variety of modeling and simulation studies. Key attributes that placed the Sea Blade well above the other designs include its low cost, low risk, high speed, shallow draft, maneuverability, and its ability to accommodate the full range of mission modules.
The Lockheed Martin LCS Team combines leaders in systems engineering, mid-market shipbuilding and naval architecture. Lockheed Martin will be the prime contractor, with Gibbs & Cox, Bollinger Shipyards and Marinette Marine sharing significant roles as principal team members.
In addition to the principal team members, core team support includes high-speed ship expertise from Donald L. Blount and Associates, FastShip, Fincantieri and NAVATEK; modularity expertise from Blohm + Voss; functional expertise from Angle, Inc., ABS, BBN Technologies, Charters Technical Services, DRS Technologies, IZAR and MA&D.
On July 17, 2003 the Navy announced that the Lockheed design (as well as the General Dynamics and Raytheon designs) was awarded a seven month contract to refine its LCS design.
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