The U.S. Navy over the weekend will commission a new Littoral Combat Ship, the service announced.
According to a recent service news release, USS Mobile (LCS 26) will be commissioned, Saturday, May 22, 2021, in Mobile, Alabama., at 10:00 a.m. CST.
Also noted that the commissioning will be a private event with a very limited audience due to public health and safety concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The event will be livestreamed to offer viewing by the general public.
USS Mobile was built in Mobile, Alabama, by Austal USA and was launched on January 11, 2020.
The future USS Mobile is the fifth Navy ship to honor the city of Mobile, which has a rich historical relationship with the Navy.
The first Mobile was a Confederate, government-operated, side-wheel steamer operating as a blockade runner and captured in New Orleans in April 1862 by U.S. forces. Commissioned as USS Tennessee, the ship was later renamed Mobile. Commissioned in March 1919, the second Mobile, a Hamburg Amerika Lines passenger liner operating between Germany and the U.S. until the outbreak of World War I, was taken over by the Allied Maritime Council and assigned to the United States after the Armistice. Mobile (CL 63) participated in numerous Pacific Theater campaigns during World War II. Commissioned on March 24, 1943, the cruiser received 11 battle stars for the ship’s time in service and was decommissioned in May 1947. The fourth Mobile (LKA 115) was an amphibious cargo ship serving from September 1969 until decommissioning in February 1994.
LCS is a highly maneuverable, lethal, and adaptable ship designed to support focused mine countermeasures, anti-submarine, and surface warfare missions. The Independence-variant LCS integrates new technology and capability to affordably support current and future missions, from deep water to the littorals.
LCS is now the second-largest surface ship class in production, behind the Navy’s DDG-51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyer program.