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The US Navy's latest littoral combat
ship, USS Little Rock, was commissioned in Buffalo, New York, on December 16
and scheduled to depart the following day for its home port at Mayport Naval
Station in Jacksonville, Florida.
Unfortunately for the Navy's newest
commissioned warship, the weather has not been cooperative.
The ship's commanding officer, Cmdr.
Todd Peters, decided to delay the departure from Buffalo for three
days because weather conditions on Lake Erie. It left on December 20, traveling
through the Welland Canal to reach Lake Ontario and then through the St.
Lawrence Seaway for a regularly scheduled stop in Montreal.
Photos posed on the ship's Facebook
page on December 27 showed it had made it to Montreal. The ship was scheduled to leave the next day for Halifax,
Nova Scotia and then reach open ocean by December 30.
However, because of ice and a lack
of tug boats to guide it out, the Little Rock remains in Montreal, Navy Lt.
Cmdr. Courtney Hillson, public affairs officer for the US Naval Surface Force
Atlantic, told Business Insider on Thursday.
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| Ice in Montreal Canada in January! Who'd have thought?! |
While in Montreal, the ship's crew
has done routine repair work, including on a cable associated with the ship's
steerable waterjet, which is part of the propulsion system. That system has caused problems for other littoral combat ships.
Those repairs were completed on
January 4, Hillson said, and in the days since the crew has been doing routine
work to "ensure readiness" for any future taskings.
The vessel is 389 feet long and has
a draft of 13.5 feet, according to a Navy
fact sheet. It has a top speed of over 45 knots and displaces about
3,400 tons with a full load.
It has a modular design that allows
it to carry out anti-surface, anti-mine, and anti-submarine operations, and its
officers and crew are trained to perform a number of tasks. It is outfitted with
a helicopter pad, a ramp for small boats, and can carry and deploy small
assault forces.
Its flight deck is the largest
of any US Navy surface combatant, and its armaments include an MK 31 Rolling
Airframe Missile System, an MK 110 57 mm gun, crew-served and small-caliber
guns, and other weapons systems that can be tailored to specific missions.
The ship is scheduled for more training
and combat-systems testing in 2018, Peters, the ship's commanding officer, told The Buffalo News.
The ship's crew completed a previous
round of assessments scheduled for 121 days in only 63 days. Once the next
round of testing and training is finished, the ship will start conducting
missions, according to The Buffalo News.
While the Little Rock's current
problems are caused by nature, it has been waylaid by manmade issues in the
past.
In September 2016, the Navy halted all littoral combat ship operations
after the fourth accident in the span of a year. The halt also prompted the
Navy to have leaders at the Navy's Surface Warfare Officer's School review the
littoral combat ship training program and recommend changes if they saw fit.
Congressional leaders have
criticized the littoral-combat-ship program. Arizona Republican Sen. John
McCain has blasted the growing cost of the ships as a "classic example" of defense acquisition gone
awry. McCain and others also expressed frustration when the White House
intervened in May to include an extra littoral combat ship in the Navy's 2018
budget request.
There you have it, friends: the fresh water (and even the salt) can freeze in the winter time in Canada and the northern United States! Amazing!
Until next time,
Fair Winds,
Old Salt
And PS: We finished off 2017 with just shy of 71,000 readers! WOW! and thanks to all of you for your interest!
And PS: We finished off 2017 with just shy of 71,000 readers! WOW! and thanks to all of you for your interest!
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