US Navy

The future USS Fort Worth recently completed its first set of sea trials on Lake Michigan, the first time the fast-moving littoral combat ship went full power on the open water.

The $480 million ship, the first naval combatant ever named for Fort Worth and only the third in a new class of vessels, was christened in December at the Marinette Marine Corp. shipyards in northern Wisconsin. Since then, it has been undergoing further work and testing, almost all of it dockside until this month, when the ship began its first round of operational testing from lead contractor Lockheed Martin.

And according to one of two men who will take command of the ship next year, the sea trials went swimmingly.

"She drives like a dream," said Cmdr. Randy Blankenship, who will command one of two crews that will staff the ship. "Without disclosing her speed, it was the fastest I've ever gone on a Navy ship."

Speed is a major ingredient of the littoral combat ship, a much smaller class of warfighter designed after 9-11 for flexibility, agility and shallow water close to coasts. Navy officials have said the ship's 100,000 horsepower can move it in excess of 40 knots, significantly faster than destroyers.

Conceived by former Navy Secretary Gordon England and a former chief of naval operations, Adm. Vern Clark, littoral combat ships are a major departure from the custom of building a deep-water ship around a weapon system. Instead, littoral ships are designed for multiple missions with varying mission packages that can be moved on and off quickly.

The Navy has committed to buying 20 more of the ships through 2015 with an eye toward a total purchase of 55. Half of the first 20 are to be built by a Lockheed Martin team and half from a team led by General Dynamics. The ships are radically different designs, though.

The future USS Fort Worth -- it cannot be formally called that until it is recommissioned in September -- underwent a full series of tests this month in Green Bay, Wis., and Lake Michigan. All the mechanical, support, communications, radar and power systems were tested, including everything but live weapons fire, said Joe North, vice president of littoral ship systems for Lockheed Martin.

"It would be kind of like if someone built you a new race car and you take it out to see if everything is working the way it is supposed to," North said.

Other than minor issues involving a few failed parts, the tests showed that the ship is ready, North said. "The speeds we saw were better than what we anticipated."
The USS Freedom, the first Lockheed Martin version, developed a crack in its hull on its first deployment, but officials said it was a welding problem, not a design flaw. The USS Independence, the first General Dynamics version of the littoral ship, has come under greater scrutiny by congressional critics because of significant corrosion problems with its hull.
Blankenship described the testing as "aggressive" and "fun."
"I'm very confident we're going to be sailing it on the Menominee River next spring," Blankenship said of the river that leads into Green Bay from the shipyards.
The 389-foot-long ship will undergo another round of tests in late November and is scheduled to be transferred to Navy custody in February. Blankenship's crew will take the ship out the St. Lawrence River in June, head into the Atlantic Ocean and around to the Gulf of Mexico for the Sept. 22 commissioning in Galveston