In the early days of August, a suspected drug-running boat zoomed through the Straits of Florida, trying to outrun her American pursuers. The drug boat zigged and zagged near reefs and sandbars at 42 knots, and skimmed over water as little as five feet deep. Ordinarily, that would have been enough shake off any Coast Guard cutter or Navy frigate chasing her – those vessels can't be in such shallow water. But this pursuer kept coming, and coming. Finally, after two hours, the drug boat ran out of gas. During their interrogations, the drug-running suspects said it was like being chased by a UFO.

The ship wasn't alien, however. It was an 80-foot, 60-ton, $6 million experimental vessel, built for the Defense Department, called the Stiletto. A Batman-esque, double-M-shaped hull allows Stiletto to operate in extremely shallow waters. A carbon fiber body let's the thing cruise at up to 60 knots. And a series of gigbit ethernet connections allows radars to drone-controllers to infrared sensors to be positioned anywhere throughout the ship.

Originally developed by the Pentagon's now-defunct Office of Force Transformation as a kind of floating lab, the Stiletto's eye-popping design has won praise from all corners of the Defense Department. But since its sponsoring office went dark, the Stiletto has been a bit of an orphan in the Pentagon's bureaucracy. Finally, it was sent to the coasts of Colombia for drug-interdiction duty.

U.S. Southern Command announced the Stiletto's presence to the local press, saying it would patrol the reefs and sandbars that ordinary served as drug-running sanctuaries. The cocaine ships stop going there. "In football terms, it was like having a shut-down corner. People don't throw to that side of the field," Captain James Hruska, the Defense Department's Stiletto program manager, tells DANGER ROOM.

But on the way home from Colombia, Stiletto saw action in the Straits of Florida. And got confused for a UFO.

[Pics: DoD]