Navy Releases Hundreds of Pages on Cold War-Era “Advanced Naval Vehicles,” Including Nuclear-Powered Aircraft and High-Speed Warship Concepts

The U.S. Navy released hundreds of pages of technical, cost, and mission analysis from the Advanced Naval Vehicles Concepts Evaluation (ANVCE) project, a 1975 study aimed at shaping naval vehicle development from 1980 to 2000. The project examined nine vehicle concepts, including nuclear-powered aircraft, surface-effect ships, and high-speed warships. Volume 1 states that candidate vehicles were judged based on three criteria: technical feasibility, military value, and affordability. The Navy released the records in response to a FOIA request, and Volume 1, the summary, was already publicly available. Volume 2, the technical feasibility assessment, details a 560-ton nuclear-powered aircraft designed to stay on station for 15 days. The aircraft uses a high-wing, T-tail configuration with a three-deck fuselage, and is equipped with a helium-cooled, graphite-moderated epithermal reactor. The report states that the aircraft could remain on station for 15 days with nuclear propulsion, but the study did not conduct an in-depth feasibility analysis of lightweight nuclear propulsion. The Navy also examined a nuclear-powered surface-effect ship concept, SES CVN, which aimed to overcome endurance challenges with high-speed ships. The documents show that the Navy incorporated lightweight nuclear propulsion assumptions into detailed naval vehicle designs, but did not demonstrate that the system actually worked. The significance of the documents lies in the incorporation of these assumptions into feasibility-level designs, not in the operational capability of the vehicles.

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