USS Montgomery Getting Ready For Sea

 

The latest US navy ship is being built in Mobile, and it bears a familiar name. 

 

It’s called the USS Montgomery.

 

Named for the capital city, it’s one of the first of this new class of ships. 

 

You’ve never seen a naval ship quite like this.

 

Built almost entirely out of aluminum and boasting three hulls, it’s called a littoral combat ship. 

This is one version built by Austal in Mobile.

 

They’re designed to replace frigates in the US Navy.

 

Austal USA President Craig Perciavalle invited me down to see what goes into making this cutting edge technology.

 

He says the unique design offers a lot for the military.

 

“The ships go very fast, they’re very maneuverable, they have a lot of volume, they have the largest flight deck of an combatant in the navy. That really gives our warfighters a lot of flexibility and a lot of capability to do what they need to do to defend our nation,” said Perciavelle.

 

Littoral means that these ships can go in close to shore. They can also be fit with different weapons for whatever mission the navy needs that day.

 

“The platform itself is designed to focus around anti surface warfare, anti submarine warfare and mine countermeasures. It has three weapon zones on it so you can drop in your weapon of choice, plug it into the network, go out and fight a fight, come back to port take it out and swap it out with another weapon,” said Perciavelle.

 

The USS Montgomery is about 85 percent complete. It’s got about a year left before it’s ready.

 

There’s a lot that goes into the production of these ships. Due to company policy, we can’t take you on board the ship. But what we can do is show you how they assemble the next ship.

 

“This is LCS 10, the gabrielle giffords, and this is basically getting ready for launch. All the pieces of the puzzle are put together here,” said Perciavelle.

 

If you’re worried about how an all aluminum ship handles on the ocean, don’t worry. Even though it’s light weight it’s still has to be safe.

 

“These ships have to meet every requirement that a steel ship has to make it it’s class so there’s no different set of rules for an aluminum ship from a steel ship. This ship doesn’t try to ride on the waves, it cuts through the waves so that actually helps. When you get into a little bit of a sea state you want to make a little more headway because it will cut through the waves rather than roll on top of them,” said Perciavelle.

 

Each ship costs about 380 million dollars. While that sounds like a lot, Perciavalle says it’s bargain for all that these ships can do. 

 

While it looks like the hulls are painted, that’s actually not the case. The metal gets blasted to get that look. But the ships are painted from the water line down

 

“It almost feels wet even though it’s dry feeling. Again, it’s very slick called coating and that’s just the base metal.”

 

These ships can go up to 40 knots, or almost 50 mile per hour. You’ll be surprised to see what exactly it is that powers these beasts through the ocean.

 

“That actually is what steers the ship are these waterjet buckets just like you do for a jet ski but obvoiusly much bigger scale.”

 

The USS Montgomery is still about a year away from being delivered to the US Navy. Until then, a lot of the inner workings of the ship still have to be installed. 

 

The shipyard will still be busy once that’s complete. Austal has an order from the military to build 10 ships, with the possibility of even more.

 

“We could be building anywhere between 15 to 20 percent of the Navy’s fleet out of soiuthern alabama and that’s something that we’re extremely proud of,” said Perciavelle.

 

Those 10 ships represent a 3.8 billion dollar investment from the military. Austal’s workforce is about 4000 strong, which has exploded from the initial 900 when the shipyard opened.

 

There have been several ships named Montgomery in our nation’s history. The most recent one until now was built during WW I. She served through WWII and even helped defend Pearl Harbor during the December 7th attack.