Social Good Engineering Magazine: GineersNow Social Innovation GineersNow Engineering Magazine Issue No. 001 | Page 103

Photo Source: Juliet Marine System
MARITIME AND MARINE ENGINEERING
Engineers Built World’s First
Super-Cavitating Watercraft

The GHOST marine plat-
form looks like every action movie
aficionado’s dream. It seems like
an attack helicopter merged into a
stealth jet fighter, except that it is a
watercraft instead of an aircraft. Not
only that, it also looks like a serious
badass tank that means business.
Possibly, that was the effect that Juliet
Marine Systems was aiming for when
it developed this boat.

This boat has been devel-
oped for the United States Navy to
use, possibly. The features are cer-
tainly something out of a James Bond
movie. It is meant to be invisible to
radars of enemy ships. At the same
time, it is faster than the military
watercraft currently in use, it is more
economical as well. However, the
most important feature claimed by
the Juliet Marine Systems for the
GHOST is that it is a super-cavitating
watercraft.

Super-cavitation is sim-
ply the use of cavitation effects to
surround any object in water with a
gas bubble so that the object trav-
els through the water with the bare
minimum of friction. By reducing
the drag friction, the object can reach
much higher speeds. In GHOST, two
tubular foils have been added which
are buoyant and lie submerged in
water. These are the objects which are
super-cavitated allowing the GHOST
103
to travel faster. JMS has yet to reveal
the details of this technology.

This watercraft is capable
of carrying a sizeable payload in its
internal weapons bay if required,
including the famous Mark 48 tor-
pedoes. Multiple weapons systems
can be incorporated into the GHOST
enabling it to attack multiple targets
at the same time. Its stealth can allow
it to creep up on enemy beaches to
transport troops or supplies. So what
we have here is a watercraft that is so
silent and deadly that calling it a boat
would be a grave injustice. Of course,
it already has the ridiculously cool
name of GHOST.