Scott Nicholas
Austal USA formally turned over the USS Montgomery littoral combat ship to the U.S. Navy at a ceremony held Thursday at the company’s shipyard in Mobile, Alabama.
The Navy said Friday Montgomery, which is scheduled to be commissioned in September, will be the military branch’s seventh LCS and fourth ship of its Independence class.
Capt. Tom Anderson, the Navy’s LCS program manager, said the service branch will deploy Montgomery next year to support anti-submarine, surface and mine countermeasure operations of the branch around the globe.
Navy awarded an approximate $1.4 billion in contract funds to Austal USA and Lockheed Martin in March 2014 for the construction of four vessels under the LCS program
Austal USA will design and build Independence-variant ships while Lockheed will build Freedom-variant ships for the Navy under their contracts.
