Developed in a record 15 months under OFT’s Wolf PAC experimental initiatives program, the 88-foot Stiletto is a powerhouse of C4ISR—command, control, communications, computers, information, surveillance and reconnaissance. It is a platform for launching, controlling and retrieving unmanned vehicles.

The vessel, designed to let the Navy creep in close to enemy shorelines to gather intelligence and support forces, has a Craft Integrated Electronics Suite that’s known as its Electronic Keel. The purpose of this maritime data bus is to let commanders control critical assets for forward operating forces. The suite provides networked communications, real-time and archived video, on-board craft status alerts, off-board sensor control, navigational data and high-performance computer processing power—all built on a Gigabit Ethernet LAN architecture with nodes for multiple client systems on the vessel.

“This is showcasing not what the future is or should be, but what the present is and should be,” says Cmdr. Gregory Glaros, leader of the Stiletto program at OFT.

And here’s an intriguing tidbit: Stiletto has the gamer world salivating over how to adapt their games to accommodate a gamer’s version of the vessel. A tour of gaming boards and blogs turns up plenty of chatter. Found on the Hero Games site: “I know a little about the type of software that can run on this vessel,” boasts one poster, CorpCommander. “For gaming purposes, you can give the vessel itself a lot of very cool abilities.”

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