Here's your chance to own Navy stealth ship
The Navy test craft Sea Shadow performs in the Sea and Air Parade in San Diego in 2005.
May 3rd, 2012
10:48 AM ET

Here's your chance to own Navy stealth ship

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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Filed under: California • Military • U.S. Navy
soundoff (259 Responses)
  1. Jeff

    With the top bid at only $139,100.00. Thats not nearly enough for the next GSA vegas party. Guess they will have to subsidise with tax payer money. Or maybe they should just keep it as a party palace on the water. That would save us tax payers the cost of rooms at least.

    May 4, 2012 at 8:01 pm | Report abuse |
  2. jack

    isnt there secret technology in that thing? they should just destroy it

    May 5, 2012 at 1:56 am | Report abuse |
  3. RCDC

    China, Russia, Drug smuglers, Al-quida could be among the bidders. I hate to see this go to the wrong hands.

    May 5, 2012 at 9:43 am | Report abuse |
    • Buzz Mann

      Did anyone bother to red the article?"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,"

      May 7, 2012 at 2:22 pm | Report abuse |
    • Bucketheads need not respond

      It will not be permitted to sail! The bid is for the "Right To Scrap It"! You headline hornets really are ridiculous. China, Russia, Drug smuglers, Al-quida really?!? Bucketheads make great republicans!

      May 8, 2012 at 8:03 am | Report abuse |
  4. The Pragmatist

    I wish I had the spare cash to bid...

    The stealth cruiser would make a perfect house boat!

    May 5, 2012 at 10:26 pm | Report abuse |
  5. Radical117

    I found me a new Bass Boat

    May 7, 2012 at 4:19 am | Report abuse |
  6. Absynthe

    None of this makes any sense! Why do we build ships, let them sit for decades, then scrap them? This ship was our pride and joy just 7 years ago!

    I'm disgusted with how we just toss money away, because there's no "Cold War." Well, since the end of the Cold War, we're now in TWO wars in the Gulf Region we can't win, and the U.S.S. Cole has been bombed, along with the WTC being bombed by two planes, taken down.

    I'd say we've had more warfare going on, since the END OF THE COLD WAR! Moronic to scrap this ship – send it to the Gulf, use it for what it's meant for, or donate it to a cause that would put it to good use, such as Sea Shepherd.

    May 7, 2012 at 1:49 pm | Report abuse |
    • Rob

      I don't know that it was ever our pride and joy. If it was, it wasn't seven years ago, it's been around for about thirty years being used for research and development.

      May 7, 2012 at 6:07 pm | Report abuse |
    • Roflfalafels

      It's a supposed way of "stimulating the economy" the military is budgeted a specific amount of money per quarter on a "use it or lose it" policy, they have to spend it one way or another, we've done it for so long that the navy is planning to decommision half the fleet within 10 years. They don't build anything because we need it, they build it to make sure they get that same amount of cash from Uncle Sam the next quarter...

      May 7, 2012 at 8:56 pm | Report abuse |
  7. Antinomic

    Can you ski behind it?

    May 7, 2012 at 2:04 pm | Report abuse |
  8. Agony Flips

    It only cost 190 million in the 1980s.

    $190,000,000.00 in 1980 had the same buying power as $559,031,029.99 in 2012.

    And it was never commissioned.

    May 7, 2012 at 7:36 pm | Report abuse |
  9. Frangible

    So you have to scrap the Sea Shadow, but get to keep the submersible barge the CIA used to steal Russian nukes with? It's a good thing there aren't any more nuclear missiles in sunk subs at the bottom of the sea, then. Oh wait.

    May 7, 2012 at 8:46 pm | Report abuse |
  10. Jay Shelley

    The new Zumwalt class warship has a big problem. Its narrow hull, called a tumblehome design, is inherently unstable. It only takes a large wave to sink her, because the hull cannot recover from sea turbulence. The latest news about stealth containing China is therefore only a ruse by the US military. The stealth missile ship's role is not to scare a global opponent but to serve as a littoral war vessel in smaller conflicts. Good job, Pentagon, you fooled 99.9 percent of the US readers.

    June 4, 2012 at 10:15 am | Report abuse |
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