Entrepreneur creates $10m stealth Navy warship to sell to US government

Named Ghost, it is designed to have no radar signature at all and to help soldiers in "troubled waters"

The stealth warship Ghost, self-funded and designed by Juliet Marine Systems (Juliet Marine Systema)

An entrepreneur who designed and self-funded a $10million marine warship is hoping to catch the eyes of procurement in the US Department of Defence.

Gregory Sancoff, a self-made millionaire and the CEO of Juliet Marine Systems, has so far ploughed $15million into developing the top-of-the-range technology, which he hopes will be adopted by the US Navy.

His efforts have resulted in a futuristic stealth ship called the Ghost, which gets its name from it having “no radar signature at all”, he told Bloomberg.

He said that Ghost can go into denied access areas for some time before leaving “without anybody knowing you were ever there”.

Speaking to WMUR-9 earlier this year, he said that he wanted to “protect US sailors who are in troubled waters”.

"It’s almost as much an aircraft as it is a boat", he has also been previously quoted as saying.

He has spent the last decade manufacturing the product, building it at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine, though there are no guarantees that the military will buy it once it’s complete.

This hasn’t deterred him, however, as he says that this creative freedom provides the firm with opportunities to develop and sell their patent later down the line.

The Ghost looks rather like the roof of a house of cards or an upside V as it slices through the water part submerged but mostly raised out of the water, looking as if it’s skimming it.

It’s also reminiscent of the US government’s dry-docked stealth ship Sea Shadow, which was shelved after two decades of testing.

It’s 38-ft long, Businessweek reports, and rides extremely smooth thanks to tubes at the lower end of its structure which, once underwater, surrounds itself in gas bubbles, essentially cutting through the waves “without feeling them”, Mr Sancoff said.

It has a steering joystick and is “very easy to drive” - and despite looking “cool”, Mr Sancoff says all of its features are made with its functionality in mind.

It is hoped that the design will later be used for more consumer-type products such as jet skis and fishing boats.