The latest development of multi-hulls for the US Navy called the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) has some interesting parallels to recreational boating.

The US Navy, after the end of the cold war, moved from preparing for open ocean confrontations with a major navy to rapid engagement near land to support operations against “asymmetric” opposition. We have seen some of this already in Somalia, where special forces in small helicopters stage reconnaissance as well as surgical strikes on enemy land convoys.

A white paper by the Secretary of the Navy in 1992 called “From the Sea” defined the scope of “littoral” combat:

Operating forward means operating in the littoral or “near land” areas of the world. As a general concept, we can define the littoral as comprising two segments of the battlespace:

* Seaward: The area from the open ocean to the shore which must be controlled to support operations ashore.
* Landward: The area inland from shore that can be supported and defended directly from the sea.

The littoral region is frequently characterized by confined and congested water and air space occupied by friends, adversaries, and neutrals–making identification profoundly difficult. This environment poses varying technical and tactical challenges to Naval Forces. It is an area where our adversaries can concentrate and layer their defenses. In an era when arms proliferation means some third world countries possess sophisticated weaponry, there is a wide range of potential challenges.

This explains how the LCS design had to depart from prior designs in the Navy. It sails extremely fast but also has to be maneuverable; it can complete a 45knt turn in only 4.6 ship lengths. A one ship length turn can be done at 7knts. It accelerates to 45knts in less than 2 minutes and stops from 30knts in two ship lengths. Even with these performance numbers it still carries sophisticated and heavy arms as well as attack helicopters and small rigid hull inflatables.

A hull design suited for shallow water, a small crew and an open space for modularity further distances it from old warships. Although it sails the open ocean the main value will be achieved navigating around harbors, major rivers and near shoreline.

What does this have to do with recreational boating? Multi-hulls are pushing along the same performance/cost and complexity formula. Why sail a million dollar 52-ft “sled” with ten crew or even a million dollar 40-ft “turbo” with seven when you can get twice the performance with a quarter-million dollar 30-ft trimaran and less than half the crew.

The polar chart below shows speed in 10knts of wind at various angles.

This video shows what performance (capability per dollar) can look like these days:

While a trimaran built for fun provides speed, a shallow draft and a wide berth in the main hull for storage like an LCS, it also has a major downside. Compared to a monohull if it capsizes the crew will be unable to right the boat again and continue sailing. That should not be too much of a problem as these boats, while seaworthy, are meant to be raced only “littoraly” (near shore).

The Orange County Register posted a story called “Mystery deepens with video of ‘launch’ off O.C.

For two days, readers have been debating the content of a series of images that appear to show a rocket launch — or a jet contrail, or something else — that appeared in the skies off Orange County…

The debate covered many possibilities from jets to submarines, but none was conclusive. Perhaps, most important of all, this debate started…December 31, 2009.

A similar incident this week has re-ignited the same debate.

Tuesday morning, the Pentagon and the North American Aerospace Defense Command were investigating video shot by a news helicopter operated by CNN affiliate KCBS/KCAL showing an ascending orange-colored contrail high into the atmosphere, officials said. A contrail is the visible vapor trail behind airplanes or rockets traveling at high altitudes.

The Federal Aviation Administration, the Coast Guard, Navy, Air Force, and California Reps. Dana Rohrabacher and Jane Harman — whose coastal districts are closest to the offshore contrails — were at a loss to explain the images.

This time around even a Russian news site is weighing in with their opinions:

An unauthorized ICBM Trident-2 launch is likely to have occurred off California’s coast in the United States. The opinion has been ventured by the vice-president of the Russian Council of Military Experts Alexander Vladimirov.

According to him, this might have been also attest [sic] launch by a private military company.

Blackwater is still in the area, and just received a giant government grant, so they can not be ruled out yet.

My first guess, based on personal experience sailing in those waters, would be that it was a submarine missile launch. I have not looked into it any more than those in the 2009 debate mentioned above, however. That went on for months yet still is unresolved.

The story in the BBC called “US Marines capture ship hijacked by pirates off Somalia” started to get me all excited about new methods of anti-piracy from the US military. Several things stood out as different from past anti-pirate exercises.

1. Marines, not Special Forces or Commandos
2. No shots fired
3. Rapid response and conclusion

Then I read through to the real details and noticed that the pirates essentially gave up after the shipping company used a clever set of defenses to render their own ship useless.

The hijack began on Wednesday when pirates boarded the 8,000-tonne container ship, which flies the flag of Antigua.

But after searching the vessel for three hours, they were unable to locate the crew, according to the ship’s German owners, Quadrant.

The pirates then phoned the shipping company in Hamburg to ask where the crew were hidden.

“They were told the crew was on holiday,” said spokesman Juergen Salamon.

“They then asked how to switch the engines back on, but were told they were broken.”

The 11-man crew, comprising two Russians, two Poles, and seven Filipinos, spent the time hidden away in a small, cramped safe room whose entrance was not immediately obvious, Mr Salamon said.

I detect a tone of humor from the spokesman. This is very different from the tone I heard last year from shipping company security experts who were rattling on about the need for allowing weapons on merchant vessels.

Could this hiding technique, coupled with basic naval support and response, be a good interim solution? Disabling the ship and protecting the crew are smart priorities versus trying to calculate the risks of firefight. This instance certainly makes it look promising. I also noticed the BBC did not pick up on the success of new piracy courts setup by the UN in the Seychelles and Kenya.