The Navy last weekend christened a high-speed catamaran that will join
a growing fleet of shallow-draft troop carrier and supply vessels that
the Defense Department envisions as the future of riverine operations.
“In
this world, it’s important to have a flexible, adaptable, and
affordable Navy” to meet ever-changing threats, Rear Adm. Lawrence
Jackson said at the Saturday ceremony in the Mobile, Ala., shipyard of
the Austal USA firm. “In this ship, the Millinocket, we have the perfect
marriage of all three,” said Jackson, the deputy commander of the
Navy’s Military Sealift Command.
The 338-foot, aluminum-hulled
Millinocket was the third in the new class of Joint High Speed Vessels
(JHSV) after USNS Spearhead, which is currently undergoing sea tests,
and the USNS Choctaw County, which was christened in September.
A fourth JHSV, the USNS Fall River, named for the Massachusetts
fishing town, is under construction by Austal, an Australian company.
The Spearhead, the first in the class of ships, was delivered eight
months late in December with initial cost overruns estimated at $31
million.
The Navy has plans for a total of 10 JHSVs at a projected
cost of about $250 million each, and all will have the prefix
designations of United States Naval Ships (USNS) as non-commissioned
ships of the Navy’s Military Sealift Command, rather than the USS prefix
designation for commissioned Navy ships.
Sailors and troops will
go aboard the Millinocket only when needed. The ship will have a crew of
21 civilian mariners from the Sealift Command and “military mission
personnel will embark as,” the Navy said last week in a statement.
The
Millinocket is the first ship of that name to join the fleet since the
SS Millinocket, a freighter, was torpedoed by a German U-boat in World
War II. In a statement last week, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said that
naming the ship after the adjoining towns of Millinocket and East
Millinocket in Maine “honors the immense contributions and support to
the military made by the men and women of these communities and the
state of Maine.”
Karen G. Mills, administrator of the U.S. Small
Business Administration, broke the traditional champagne bottle on the
Millinocket’s hull as the ship’s sponsor.
The ship, capable of
speeds of 35 knots (40 mph) with a 15-foot draft, has berthing space for
up to 42 crew members and 104 troops, plus airline-style seating for
another 312 troops.
The Navy has billed the JHSVs, and the new
Littoral Combat Ships, as fast and flexible additions to the fleet that
will allow for troops and their gear to debark quickly for coastal and
riverine operations.
Sea trials for the Millinocket will be
delayed for several months because of yet another accident involving the
Carnival Cruise Line.
The ship had been scheduled to go first from the Austal shipyard to the BAE Systems dry dock, also in Mobile, but the Carnival line’s 900-foot Triumph broke from its moorings at the BAE dry dock on April 3 in high winds, killing one worker and damaging the facility.
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