City Of Montgomery Lays Out Plan For USS Montgomery Commissioning

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The USS Montgomery is something you’ve likely never seen. The ship is a trimaran, which means it has three hulls.
Not to mention the entire ship is made of aluminum.

Even though Montgomery is very much an Air Force town, leaders are excited for the ship to represent the city.

“Anything you can get the Navy and a ship that’s going to go around the world and you sail into that harbor and it’s the USS Montgomery, everyone knows it’s going to be Montgomery Alabama. That sends a very special message, that’s called marketing. But it’s also a pride factor,” said Mayor Todd Strange.

I got an exclusive chance to tour the ship in Mobile when it was about 80 percent complete in December 2014.

It’s a very impressive piece of machinery, able to carry out pretty much any mission you can think of.

In addition to announcing the plans for the commission, officials introduced the man taking over the ship, Commander Dan Straub.

“I’m really excited to be commanding this ship. It gives me an opportunity to take a group of sailors who are highly trained, to sea to operate the nation’s premier warship. So I’m just plain excited, I can’t put it in other words,” said Straub.

Because the USS Montgomery is so high tech, it only needs 53 people to man the entire vessel.

That means no matter who you are, you have more than one job on board.

“We’ve got so many automated systems on board that we’re able to multi-train our sailors in different ways so that each of my sailors carries numerous jobs, has different duties, it makes each one almost indispensable,” said Straub.

The official commission date is September 10th in Mobile.