You've got about 24 hours to get your bids in on a piece of super-cool Cold War hardware - a stealth warship the government no longer wants.
The General Services Administration is taking bids on the U.S. Navy's Sea Shadow, built by Lockheed Martin in 1983 for the Navy to test radar-evading capabilities and other weapons systems. The ship has outlived its usefulness, and the Navy is trying to unload it to avoid maintenance costs, the Los Angeles Times reports.
"It is not cost-effective for the Navy to maintain the ship in an inactive condition any longer, and the ship no longer serves any operational or research purpose," Navy spokesman Christopher Johnson told the Times. "Our only disposition option is dismantling and recycling."
Which means if you submit the highest bid, you won't be taking the 118-foot-long, 499-ton Sea Shadow for a three-hour tour with Gilligan and the Skipper.
"The ex-Sea Shadow shall be disposed of by completely dismantling and scrapping within the U.S.A. Dismantling is defined as reducing the property such as it has no value except for its basic material content," read the conditions on the GSA auction site.
That seems to have dampened the interest of evil madmen bent on world domination. (The Sea Shadow is said to be the inspiration for the villain's vessel in the 1997 James Bond film "Tomorrow Never Dies.")
The GSA website reports only 10 bidders so far, with the top bid at $139,100. Bidding started at $10,000.
The winning bidder will have to pick up the prize from the Maritime Administration National Defense Reserve Fleet at Suisun Bay, California.
The Sea Shadow comes complete with a covered barge/floating dry dock, so once you bust it up you will have a keepsake to remind you of what could have been.
Bids are due by 6 p.m. ET Friday. Good luck.
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$2!!
"Two dollars! I want my two dollars!"
Let's sell it to Mexican drug lords, so tweakers can get their meth shipped to them overnight!
The best way to dispose of this thing is already at hand, it's called a SINKEX. Just haul it out to the Pacific Ocean test range, have a B1 drop a JDAM on it, problem solved.
Normally I'd be appalled at how stupid our government is, but I guess I'm used to it by now.
Selling it for scrap metal is more cost efficient than driving someplace and dropping a bomb that costs a bunch of money with a jet that costs a lot of money to fly. Selling to for a couple hundred thousand dollars at least makes some money back. I think their idea is much better than yours and I won't even call you names like you did our government.
Yah that's a great idea! Let's just put some more junk in the ocean! Not that there's enough already?
Who says I don't own one already? Bwahahahaaa.
Can I park my stealth ship in your dry dock?
let's sell it to wikileaks, Assange wanted to be the villain from Tomorrow Never Dies.
I have $12.83 in my pocket. I'll take it.
I'm sure the Colombian drug lords will buy it and put it to use.....
time to dismantle the fed govt since every limb of it seems to be out of control in some way...
your segway is a failure
Selling old gear for scrap akes them out of control?
PFFT
I will give you $3.50
Loch Ness Monster
unless of course this is done to continure the war culture in america.. that being give your enemy a fraction of your armaments so you can yell "we need more tech to fight them off."
I'll offer $69.01
I don't need a stealth ship. I have a +17 cloak of agility with a slight speed increase. They couldn't catch me anyway.
like ill be able to cruise around in it?
Reminds me quite a bit of the Merrimac from the Civil War.
OK, so the ship will be cutup to reduce "...the property such as it has no value except for its basic material content." Seems like the Navy should put some of its people to work (already on the payroll) cutting it up and sell the scrap directly. But instead they want to sell it for what will be a lot less and let someone else make the profit. Your tax dollars at work!