Sea Shadow was developed and built at Lockheed's Redwood City, California, facility, inside the Hughes Mining Barge (HMB-1), which functioned as a floating dry dock during construction and testing.

Sea Shadow was revealed to the public in 1993 and was housed at the San Diego Naval Station until September 2006, when it was relocated with the Hughes Mining Barge to the Suisun Bay Reserve Fleet in Benicia, California.

[6] In the 1997 James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, media tycoon Elliot Carver (Sir Jonathan Pryce) operated a stealth ship that resembled Sea Shadow's appearance.

Christened as Sea Dolphin II in the film, the secret and stealthy floating lair was used as a plot device to attempt to initiate World War III.

The craft also appears thrice in the single-player campaign of Act of War: High Treason (a 2006 real-time strategy game by Eugen Systems[9]) as an enemy unit.