If you grew up watching Miami Vice or even caught the 2006 feature length movie, you know that when it comes to superior fire power, equipment and technology, the drug lords win hands down--but not this time. After a 2 hour boat chase through the Straits of Florida last August, drug runners were stunned at their capture claiming it was like being chased by a UFO.
The ship wasn't alien, however. It was an 80-foot, 60-ton, $6 million experimental vessel, built for the Defense Department, called the Stiletto. A Batman-esque, double-M-shaped hull allows Stiletto to operate in extremely shallow waters. A carbon fiber body let's the thing cruise at up to 60 knots. And a series of gigbit ethernet connections allows radars to drone-controllers to infrared sensors to be positioned anywhere throughout the ship.
Developed for the Pentagon's now-defunct Office of Force Transformation, the Stiletto eventually found a new life fighting the war on drugs although if you were tasked with writing the script for a television show, it's just a question of time before the bad guy's get their own.
via wired
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