Reporter's Notebook

Still flat as a table

ABOARD A SMALL TACTICAL CRAFT ON THE POTOMAC RIVER – In my own defense, I offered not to go this time. Senior photographer Rob Curtis and I got a ride from the Lockheed Martin crew yesterday in their Small Tactical Craft, aka COBRA, so I told LockMart spokesman Jim Gring it was fine if they took somebody else on this morning’s press trip instead of me. He insisted, so I went again.

The brief by Robby Harris, Lockheed’s director of advanced concepts, was much more formal for my distinguished compatriots from the elite Washington defense press corps. Harris took us through the boat’s external features before we climbed into the shock-absorbing SEAL seats in the aft crew section. Then, as the boat’s captain, Joe Schmitt, pushed up the throttles, we all crowded into the pilot compartment to observe the boat at speed.

Lockheed’s sales pitch for the COBRA is based on its sea-keeping; its half-catamaran, half Small Waterplane Area Twin Hull design means it doesn’t slam in rough seas, which LockMart says will provide a smoother ride for SEAL special operators and Marines.

As before, though, the weather just wasn’t cooperating – the Potomac was still as flat as a billiards table. “Remember!” Harris called over the engines. “Imagine, four, five-foot waves out here!”

Schmitt turned back from the controls: “I apologize,” he said. “I wish I had some weather. The river doesn’t do it justice.” He throttled back and pulled the COBRA into a wide turn in the middle of the channel. Then we made a high speed run toward National Harbor, and he slowed to take us through the channel to the dock. I idly pointed out the Freedom tied up in the distance at Alexandria.

“Hey, can we go take a look at it?” asked reporter Rebekah Gordon of Inside the Navy.

“You want to?” asked Harris. Along with the other representatives of Washington’s hard-nosed defense press corps, I nodded and grinned.

Schmitt had to keep the COBRA’s throttles down to stay within the speed limit for traffic under the Wilson Bridge, so we couldn’t make a blazing, white-wake pass by the Freedom. But when I told him I envied his office – at the helm of an experimental spec ops boat in the middle of the Potomac – over mine, he stood up from the controls and invited me to take over.

The COBRA’s helm is a foam-covered steering wheel not too different from the standard controls on a speedboat; it was jittering slightly, along with the rest of the boat, as the twin 800 horsepower diesels rumbled at low power. My career as pilot of the COBRA was aggressively undistinguished. I added a bit of left rudder to keep the craft lined up in the channel under the Wilson Bridge, as digital cameras began snapping in the cabin. Gordon took over after me for just a few moments, then Schmitt took back the conn to take us under the drawbridge span.

We approached the port side of the Freedom, which looked much the same as it had when I walked off the ship in Cleveland as it traveled from the shipyard in Marinette, Wis., to its temporary berth at Naval Station Norfolk, Va. One difference was that the ship’s port bridge wing – which it crunched against a wall in November in Canada’s Welland Canal – was repaired. There was a small crowd of people standing aft of the Rolling Airframe Missile Launcher, above the flight deck. I took out my BlackBerry and called my senior colleague, Defense News editor Vago Muradian, whose show this week is about the littoral combat ship.

“Hey, are you still on the Freedom? Where on the ship are you?”

“Yeah, why?” Muradian said, irked. I was interrupting his tour.

“I just wanted to see if you could see us,” I said. “We’re in the gray and black boat on the river right now, coming toward you.”

“Are you out on our port side? Oh – we’ve been admiring your boat,” Muradian said.

“We’ve been admiring yours,” I said.

“Mine’s bigger,” he said.

“Mine’s faster,” I said – although this is not true. The Freedom has reached at least 45 knots on trials, about 10 more than the COBRA can make. But when boaters get into an argument, tempers can become heated.

I let Muradian get back to his tour and Schmitt nosed our boat back south under the Beltway.