Second Wicked-Looking LCS Launched
The latest Navy fast-burner's feet are officially wet.
The second Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), USS Independence, has been launched after a complex operation in Mobile, Ala.
The ship first saw the sun April 26 when workers at Austal USA moved the striking, aluminum-hulled trimaran out of its building shed and onto a floating drydock. The 417-foot-long ship was balanced on its center section while stanchions steadied the outriggers covering the craft's 100-foot beam.
Launched, but not commissioned. Though the Indy is floating, Lockheed still has a laundry list of work to do before she's ready to assume her official USS designator and (presumably) start sending Somali pirates to Davy Jones' Locker or put the fear of Allah in Iranian fast-boast crews. She comes in at an estimated $400 million (or two F-22s!), which is an awful lot of dosh for a job that could probably be accomplished with a volley from a 5-inch Mark 45 deck gun.
In fairness though, the trimaran hulled LCS does bring in a whole new class of capabilities that would be quite useful in fighting, say, off the target-rich shores of the Iranian gulf isles. Wonder if her older (but lamer looking) sister ship, the Freedom, is first tasked with escorting battle groups in and out of the Persian Gulf.
