HIGH-SPEED WATERCRAFT ARE WEARING DOWN THEIR CREWS

By Darren Schuback, CEO, The Whiskey Project Group EVERY HIGH-SPEED WATERCRAFT OPERATOR KNOWS THE FEELING. The hull clears a wave, drops and lands hard, sending the impact through the deck, seat, and into the body. Then it happens again and again.

Over a long transit, those shocks accumulate. Over years of service, that cumulative impact can contribute to multiple injuries, with consequences that can ultimately be career-ending.

The technical term is whole-body vibration, and the problem is not new. In 2020, U.S. Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander Ryan Butler published measurements from the service’s 45-foot Response Boat-Medium. His testing was conducted in best-case conditions. Calm seas, light winds and clear weather. Even then, crew exposure exceeded the level used to assess whole-body vibration and, at times, approached occupational exposure limits.

That matters because whole-body vibration is not simply a comfort issue. Later research has associated repeated exposure with lower-back pain, disc degeneration, sciatica and other musculoskeletal disorders. It can also contribute to fatigue, dizziness and impaired balance. For personnel expected to make fast decisions and perform physically demanding tasks at sea, those effects have operational consequences.

In 2025, the Department of Defense’s Traumatic Brain Injury Center of Excellence brought much of that evidence together in an information paper on military high-speed watercraft injuries. It found that wave-slamming places combatant-craft crewmen at increased risk of lower-back, neck and head injuries, as well as chronic pain.

Shock is not only a personnel issue, but also a platform readiness issue. The same forces are transferred into the vessel and everything carried aboard it. Repeated slamming places loads on sensitive electronics, sensors, communications equipment, weapon and mission systems, and other components, accelerating wear and increasing maintenance requirements..

I came to this subject through experience before I came to it through research.

I spent 24 years in the Royal Australian Navy and Australian Defence Force Special Operations, including time as a Clearance Diver working on and off high-speed watercraft. I watched fit, highly trained people develop chronic back and joint problems after years on the water.

At the time, we largely accepted it as part of the job. Today, better research and better engineering give us an opportunity to reduce that burden.

Much of the response to high-speed craft injury has understandably focused on what can be done once a vessel is already in service. Suspension seating, maintenance, crew training, exposure limits and changes to speed or operating profiles. Those measures matter.

But the better opportunity is to address that load before the vessel enters service, through the way it is designed. Reducing the forces entering the platform in the first place can protect both the people aboard and the equipment they rely on to complete the mission.

Butler found that the controls available on Coast Guard vessels did not eliminate the hazard. The Defense Health Agency’s 2025 paper similarly identifies hull design, suspension seating, and operating practices as areas where injury prevention can be improved.

Speed, payload, range, maneuverability, and seakeeping are treated as fundamental performance requirements when tactical watercraft are evaluated. The physical load transferred to the operator should be considered with the same rigor. So should the shock loads transferred to the crew, equipment, and mission systems.

A craft that can maintain speed in difficult conditions while reducing punishment to its crew and equipment is not simply more comfortable. It can help preserve human performance, equipment reliability and, ultimately, mission availability.

This is not about trading away mission performance. Marines, sailors, soldiers and special operators will still need to move quickly, operate in poor conditions and accept risk when the mission demands it. The engineering challenge is to reduce unnecessary physical and mechanical load while preserving the capability the mission requires.

That principle has shaped how we approach watercraft design at The Whiskey Project Group. The Whiskey watercraft were developed by operators for operators, with hull geometry, ergonomics, seating, and mission systems considered together from the outset. Its hull form was engineered to reduce slamming loads on personnel and equipment by up to 40 percent compared with legacy hulls.

Our NAiAD vessels address a different operating requirement. The Watchtower Class RHIBs are proven offshore rescue vessels used extensively across all major Australian and New Zealand rescue agencies, as they are designed to operate in demanding sea conditions, where rough-weather capability, operator ergonomics, and reliability are critical.

The point is not that every vessel solves the problem in the same way. The operator, the mission, and the conditions they will face should shape the platform from the beginning. Crew, system, and sensor protection should not be considered apart from platform performance. They are part of platform performance.

We have more than two decades of evidence showing what repeated high-speed impacts can do to the people operating these vessels. We also understand more about the loads those same impacts place on the platforms and mission systems around them. We have better tools, better data, and better engineering than we did when much of that research began.

The Whiskey Group applies that knowledge to ensure shock loading, for both personnel and equipment, is a core specification. Marines, sailors, soldiers, and other specialist crews who rely on high-speed watercraft for combat, patrol, and rescue missions deserve nothing less.