A major challenge for Ghost is that the Navy’s policy is to buy only technologies in which it has announced interest. “It is not procedure to procure a system without established requirements,” says Commander Thurraya Kent, spokeswoman for the Navy’s research, development, and acquisitions arm. In the fall of 2009 the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) briefly expressed interest in funding the Ghost project, but Sancoff declined its request for a formal proposal because the agency required use rights to all of Juliet Marine’s patents. “I’m a startup company—this is how I’ll earn money, by owning the technology,” says Sancoff. Darpa declined to comment.
Over the years, Sancoff sent the Office of Naval Research images of his design. “They laughed at me; they thought I was crazy,” he says. “‘Those jet engines can’t run underwater in those tubes. That boat can never be stable. You can never supercavitate those hulls.’ Obviously I was discouraged.”
In October 2009, after about six months working in the hangar, Sancoff got a frantic call from his patent attorney. “He said, ‘I got something in the mail, I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’ve been practicing for 35 years,’ ” remembers Sancoff. The letter, from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, with a recommendation from the Office of Naval Research, turned out to be a secrecy order, forbidding Juliet Marine from filing its patents internationally or talking with anyone, including potential investors, about its technology. “They didn’t explain why. … They wouldn’t talk with my lawyer. They wouldn’t talk with me,” says Sancoff.
For two summers, Ghost’s trial runs were conducted only at night. “We were going out at like 3 a.m.,” says Joseph Curcio, a marine engineer who taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and designed robotic systems for the Navy before joining Juliet Marine in 2010 as vice president of research and development. “We’d have to cover the [propellers] with a blanket and move the boat in the dark. We weren’t allowed to let anyone take pictures.”
The secrecy orders were lifted after two years, also without explanation. That’s when Kinsella of Avalon Ventures heard about Ghost and joined the company’s board, investing $10 million. “We’ve never done a military application before,” he says, before pointing out that Sancoff has a strong track record as a serial entrepreneur. “I’ve always made money with this guy. He can squeeze a nickel until the buffalo pees.”
Ghost failed to lift out of the water on its first dozen trial runs. Then, one day in 2011, with Sancoff and Curcio at the helm, Ghost emerged from the water. “We’d just gotten all the controls right,” says Curcio. “We were calling over to the chase boat, asking ‘Are we up? Are we up?’ and Tom [Richards] radioed over, like, ‘I can’t believe it, I can see, like, four feet under the hull.’” Euphoria ensued. “We’d had all these experts telling us … it’s going to nosedive and flip over,” says Sancoff. “And all of the sudden, it runs perfect. It’s not unstable at all.”
Not long afterward, Sancoff accidentally drove the craft into the rocks. “The Admiral was away on a business trip, so we got to blame him,” says Curcio. Admiral Richards generally captains the Ghost’s chase boat during trial runs. “We had no adult supervision,” adds Sancoff. “I was not happy with myself, to say the least.”
“We’d had all these experts telling us … it’s going to nosedive and flip over. And all of the sudden, it runs perfect. It’s not unstable at all”
That’s when Juliet Marine hired Cliff Byrd, a 6-foot-3 former Navy SEAL trained to drive anything from a dumptruck to a Mark V Special Operations Craft. Byrd, 36, had spent 12 years with the SEALs, traveling more than 220 days a year to hot spots around the world. Mild mannered, with a shaved head and an arm tattoo that reads Strength From Above, Byrd says he cannot talk about his missions but that he left the Navy to spend more time with his wife and two daughters after a helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan, killing some of his friends. Like so many of his colleagues, Byrd suffers from back pain and permanent injuries to his elbows, caused by the harsh impact of riding in small boats through rough seas.
“You’d think skydiving or all the other things we do, that you’d get injured from that, but actually it’s the boats that you take most of the beating on,” he says. “A lot of guys have back injuries, hips, ankles, knees, shoulders, you name it—any joint, just because of all the shock your body goes through.”
The smoothness of Ghost’s ride is perhaps the team’s greatest point of pride. “I was riding down to Newport, and we had up to 8- to 10-foot seas,” says Byrd. “We’re sitting in here joking about it and not actually feeling anything.” Sancoff slept for half the ride. “But the chase boat that came along with us pounded through the ocean so bad,” he says. “They were seasick, throwing up. When we got to Rhode Island, I said, ‘Let’s go and get a steak,’ right? They couldn’t even eat.”
Roger Schaffer, a member of the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, worked as a civilian contractor on Navy ship design for 42 years. He saw Juliet Marine give a presentation about Ghost earlier this year. “It’s difficult to come up with something new in a field like naval architecture, but they’ve managed to combine a number of features into an overall concept that looks quite attractive,” says Schaffer. “If the supercavitation technology of the Ghost proves successful, it will allow the Ghost to obtain significantly higher speed than hydrofoils or SWATHs have been able to achieve.” That said, Juliet Marine faces a tough battle. “Normally, innovative ship designs stem from funded research by the Navy at one of their labs,” says Schaffer. “[Juliet Marine] also has a problem with the institutional bias the Navy tends to have against small crafts like the Ghost.”
In the face of budget cuts, Defense officials have asked companies to fund more of their own research, which is why Juliet Marine personnel are surprised they haven’t garnered more interest. Juliet Marine hopes things will change if the craft breaks the commercial SWATH speed record of 31 knots. So far, Ghost’s top speed is 29 knots, but Curcio says 50 knots is within reach, roughly the speed of Mark V boats, a formerly popular mode of transport for Navy SEALs that was discontinued in 2012.
Seven U.S. allies, including Qatar, Israel, and Korea, have expressed interest inGhost, according to Sancoff. “A lot of countries adopt new technology much more rapidly than the U.S.,” he says. “Do I want to see this boat in the Persian Gulf with another flag on the back of it? Not necessarily. But if that’s what it takes to make this company successful, to supply boats to the U.S. Navy, then we’ll do it,” he says. The Wright Brothers, he adds, got a contract from France before the U.S. government. “They thought they were crazy, too,” says Sancoff. “It took years for the Wright brothers to convince [the government] that an airplane might be viable.”
“Do I want to see this boat in the Persian Gulf with another flag on the back of it? Not necessarily. But if that’s what it takes to make this company successful … then we’ll do it”
The potential market for new naval vessels will reach about $46 billion in the next nine years, according to AMI International, a global defense market analysis firm. Juliet Marine says
Ghost’s technology could also be adapted to build stable, superfast torpedoes or unmanned sea drones. Commercial possibilities include jet skis or craft for transporting workers to oil platforms. “These rich bankers who take helicopters from [Wall Street] to the Hamptons now, you know?” adds Kinsella. “If they don’t want to take a helicopter, the
Ghost could take a bunch of people out there at high speed.” Juliet Marine is in talks with
Barclays (BCS) about an initial public offering, and Kinsella says the startup isn’t opposed to an acquisition by a larger defense contractor. The startup plans to build two additional boats by the end of the year, which will be used for weapons testing and demonstrations.
With its patents now available to the public, Juliet Marine’s staff worries other countries and companies will steal its technology. “The Chinese are probably already starting to knock this off,” says Sancoff, adding that hackers attempt to break into his company’s computer systems hundreds of times each month. One day in 2009, he arrived at Building 129 to find the locks broken. He assumes whoever did it wanted to photograph the boat’s parts; the break-in remains unsolved, he says.
On a sunny morning in July, Ghost is tethered to a buoy off the Portsmouth shipyard in the Piscataqua River. Curcio and Byrd climb aboard through the back door, above which is emblazoned New Hampshire’s motto: Live Free or Die. They’ll be manning the ship for a trip down the river out into three-foot swells in the open ocean.
Up front, the cockpit is outfitted with large windshields fashioned from two-inch-thick glass. There are multiple screens displaying maps and Ghost’s various controls, but Byrd needs only the throttle and a four-inch joystick to steer the craft. As he turns on the engines and ventilation, the vessel sounds like an airplane lifting off. The back cabin, big enough to transport 16 people, is dimly lit. Seats clamped into the metal grid floor are outfitted with quick-release race car safety belts. There are no windows but for two round glass panes near the cabin floor, each with a diameter of about six inches. Through them, one sees the water gushing by—until the hull lifts up into the air. Then, against a blue backdrop of the ocean below, one sees only drops of spray against the portholes.
