Feb. 25--PROVIDENCE -- The Navy is looking to donate two top-secret vessels, and Frank Lennon, who had operated the former Russian Sub Museum here, has taken notice.

The deal would be a two-for-one: Sea Shadow, which was the Navy's first experimental "stealth" ship, is berthed inside the Hughes Mining Barge, which is the only fully submersible dry dock ever built. The Navy has been trying to give away the pair, now on the West Coast, since 2006.

"Interested is one word," Lennon said yesterday.

Lennon made the front page of the Wall Street Journal yesterday, saying he'd be interested in turning the pair of decommissioned vessels into museums, just as the Cold War-era Juliett 484 (also known as the K-77) was made into the sub museum.

But that doesn't mean he has the finances to back it.

"Without any consideration of how practical or feasible it might be to bring here? Sure, it's a wonderful story. There is great history involved," Lennon said. "But right now, it's more of a dream than a reality."

Lennon says his organization, the USS Saratoga Foundation, is focused on the Saratoga, the Cold War-era aircraft carrier that the foundation is trying to bring from its temporary berth in Middletown to a permanent site at the former Quonset Point Naval Air Station, in North Kingstown.

The foundation just relegated its other major project, the Russian Sub Museum, to the scrap heap because it could not afford the substantial costs to refurbish the vessel after it sank in a rainstorm.

The submarine was battered in a 2007 storm and spent the greater part of 2008 at the bottom of the Providence River, having taken in so much water in that storm that it could not right itself.

In December, the foundation agreed to hand over the badly deteriorated sub to Rhode Island Recycled Metals. The sub, now raised from the river bottom, is still moored at Collier Point Park, off Allens Avenue, but it's closed to the public. The recycler is to move the submarine downriver to its property to begin processing its metals.

The Sea Shadow and the Hughes Mining Barge present an opportunity for Lennon to bring another naval museum to the Ocean State. They are being offered by the Navy as a pair, but they were not originally conceived that way.

At the time it was built, in the 1970s, the massive barge -- 180 feet long and 70 feet high -- was reportedly used for commercial deep sea mining. In actuality, it was part of a covert CIA mission, Operation Jennifer, to raise a Soviet submarine from the Pacific Ocean.

With its satellite-proof roof, it was used again in the early 1980s to conceal the development and testing of the Sea Shadow, whose existence the Navy did not publicly acknowledge until 1993.

"They are so atypical of what we think of as naval vessels," said Lennon. But, even still, they would be a costly endeavor to take on, he said, especially since the Navy offers no support beyond transferring ownership rights.

Just transporting the pair from their moorings at Suisun Bay, near San Francisco, to the East Coast would be more than the museum could afford, he said. Then there is the cost of maintenance and upkeep.

For now, Lennon said, his focus is on the Saratoga.

The foundation has raised nearly $10.5 million of the estimated $11 million it will need, but it is still awaiting approvals from the state Department of Environmental Management and the Coastal Resources Management Council.

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