The Navy says that it will decommission a pair of San Diego-based surface warships and a submarine this year, as well as several large support vessels that were built in Barrio Logan by General Dynamics-NASSCO.
The best known of the ships is the USS Lake Erie, a 33-year-old Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser that was scheduled to be decommissioned last year. The Navy extended its service life and dispatched it to the Caribbean Sea, where it is still on patrol. The ship — one of the last “Tico” cruisers in the Navy — is now set to decommission on Sept. 30.
One day earlier, the Navy will decommission the USS Germantown, a 40-year-old Whidbey Island-class dock landing ship that transports and delivers Marines to various parts of the world, notably war zones. The Germantown participated in Operations Desert Shield/Storm and Iraqi Freedom.
Cmdr. Chris Rose (c), Alexandria’s commanding officer, was among the sailors on the conning tower as the USS Alexandria pulled into Naval Base Point Loma on Thursday, May 15, 2025, in San Diego, CA. USS Alexandria returns to Naval Base Point Loma after a 7-month deployment in the Pacific. (Nelvin C. Cepeda / The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Those two ceremonies will be preceded on Aug. 4 by the decommissioning of the USS Alexandria, a 35-year-old Los Angeles-class hunter-killer submarine that is based at Naval Base Point Loma. It returned from its final deployment in May 2025.
The Navy is phasing out older Los Angles-class boats to make way for the newer and more capable Virginia-class subs. The Navy has not indicated which sub will replace the Alexandria in San Diego.
The NASSCO-built support vessels USNS Red Cloud, USNS Watkins and USNS Pomeroy will be decommissioned at different times between April and September. The shipyard is nearly finished building the USNS Hector A. Cafferata Jr., the last of the Expeditionary Sea Base type of vessels scheduled for NASSCO. The ships serve as forward-deployed staging bases for special operations and rotary-wing aircraft.