Marinette Marine to hand over 2nd littoral combat ship today

Crew will start preparing Navy vessel for September commissioning

The LCS-3, the future USS Fort Worth, being built at Marinette Marine, has a 57mm gun on the forward deck, Tuesday, June 5, 2012.

MARINETTE — Lockheed Martin will deliver the future USS Fort Worth to the U.S. Navy today.

The ship, built at Marinette Marine Corp. in Marinette, is the second littoral combat ship the company has produced for the Navy.

Navy crew will move into the ship beginning today. The future Fort Worth is expected to stay in Marinette through late summer while crews prepare for transit to Galveston, Texas, where it will be commissioned in September.

"They've been through a lot of familiarization training, a lot of classroom training and have had hands-on training because they were with us during (acceptance sea) trials," said Joe North, vice president of Littoral Ship Systems for Lockheed Martin.

The Navy said it intends to purchase 55 of the vessels. Two variations of the littoral combat ship are in production — the version built at Marinette and another by Austal USA in Mobile, Ala. Through fiscal year 2015, the contracts could be worth $3.6 billion to Lockheed Martin and $3.5 billion to Austal USA, according to the Navy.

Electricians Mate 1st Class Lidia Dorame is one of the crew who will take over the future Fort Worth today.

"We're excited. We've been waiting for this day," the 13-year veteran of the Navy said Tuesday while standing near the 57 mm gun turret on the foredeck of the ship. "We've been training a lot. I've been with the command since September 2010, so I've been training since then."

The core crew of the LCS is about 40, a reduction from other classes of the ships.

Marinette Marine has been ramping up production at the yard. It has about 1,350 employees and is expected to peak around 2,200 workers.

North said lessons learned while building the first ship — USS Freedom — were applied to Fort Worth, cutting overall man hours on the construction of Fort Worth by about 30 percent.

Lockheed Martin has stressed the need to keep delivering ships on time and on budget and said today's delivery comes two months ahead of the contract. The average cost per ship is $360 million.

The Navy faced several cracks and some corrosion in the first ships it says have been dealt with — including design changes to follow-on ships.

Two other ships in the class — the future USS Detroit and USS Milwaukee — are under construction at Marinette Marine as part of a 10-ship contract. Lockheed Martin is expected to bid on building another 10 ships in fiscal year 2016. That could carry construction through 2030 and beyond if approved, North said.

Fort Worth will be based out of San Diego, Calif.

North said delivering the ship is the second-happiest day in the construction process.

"The first one is watching the crew take the ship and sail away," he said.