The Navy’s new stealth Special Ops boats have been spotted in the Pacific

In the past few days, images have surfaced on social media showing the U.S. Navy’s latest stealth watercraft being loaded onto a vessel in Naha, Japan sometime last week. The Combatant Craft Medium Mark 1, or CCM Mk1, entered into service with the U.S. Navy Special Warfare Combatant Crewmen (SWCC) Special Boat Teams as recently as late 2015. The boat was designed specifically to limit detection and offer reconfigurable loadouts to the special operations community for different types of mission sets.

According to previous statements issued by U.S. Special Operations Command, the CCM Mk1 was designed specifically “to provide small-caliber gunfire support, infiltrate and exfiltrate Special Operation Forces, conduct VBSS (Visit, board, search, and seizure), special reconnaissance, coastal patrol and interdiction, counter-terrorism operations, and FID (Foreign Internal Defense).”

That laundry list of capabilities comes, in large part, thanks to the ability to swap out equipment intended for specific operations, though in the images that hit Twitter, it’s difficult to assess if any specialized configuration is in play. It’s worth noting that despite the long list of things this boat is capable of, it’s primary role remains the insertion and extraction of Special Operations troops, most notably, Navy SEALs. In these images, the boats are being loaded onto the U.S. Army vessel Harpers Ferry (LCU 2022).