The U.S. Navy decommissioned USS Fort Worth (LCS 3) at Naval Base San Diego on July 29. The move ended nearly 14 years of service for the Freedom-variant littoral combat ship.<\/p>\n
The Navy classified Fort Worth as an early-hull operational and test platform. Its retirement will redirect investment toward upgrades for the remaining littoral combat ship fleet.<\/p>\n
Marinette Marine built the vessel in Marinette, Wisconsin. Fort Worth entered service on September 22, 2012, as the first production ship of the Freedom class.<\/p>\n
The vessel served as both an operational unit and a technology test platform. Its crew helped establish the configuration and deployment capabilities used by later littoral combat ships.<\/p>\n
Fort Worth began a deployment to Singapore in November 2014. The ship was scheduled to return to San Diego in March 2016.<\/p>\n
Propulsion system failures extended its stay in Asia by several months. The vessel later returned to California and underwent a major overhaul.<\/p>\n
The Navy subsequently reassigned Fort Worth to an experimental role. That decision kept the ship in the Pacific, unlike other Freedom-class vessels.<\/p>\n
Former Navy Secretary Gordon England delivered the ceremony\u2019s principal address. Rear Adm. Matthew Kawas, Jill J.R. Labbe and retired Capt. Warren Cupps also provided remarks.<\/p>\n
Littoral combat ships operate in coastal waters and open-ocean environments. Their missions include forward presence, maritime security, sea control and deterrence.<\/p>\n
The fleet comprises the Freedom and Independence variants. The ships are designed to operate with joint, allied, crewed and uncrewed forces.<\/p>\n
Current plans call for the former Fort Worth to be scrapped alongside the former USS Freedom. The Navy has now retired six Freedom-class littoral combat ships.<\/p>\n
The other retired vessels are Milwaukee, Detroit, Little Rock and Sioux City. Those four ships have been offered to allied nations, but no potential buyer has been publicly identified.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The U.S. Navy decommissioned USS Fort Worth (LCS 3) at Naval Base San Diego on July 29. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-391852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}