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USN's ninth San Antonio-class ship completes acceptance trials
Grace Jean, Washington, DC - IHS Jane's Defence Weekly
10 October 2013
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The US Navy's amphibious transport dock ship Somerset (LPD 25) launches from Huntington Ingalls Industries' Avondale shipyard in Louisiana on 14 April 2012. The ship completed acceptance trials in September 2013 and is scheduled to deliver in October 2013. Source: US Navy
The US Navy's (USN's) ninth San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship has completed acceptance trials and is expected to deliver some time in October, officials said on 10 October.
Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) announced that Somerset (LPD 25) finished the series of dockside and underway trials for the navy's Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV) on 20 September 2013 following three days of at-sea testing in the Gulf of Mexico. Built by Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII), Somerset will be commissioned on 1 March 2014.
The penultimate San Antonio-class ship, John P Murtha (LPD 26), is under construction at HII's Ingalls Shipbuilding and is expected be to completed in 2016. Portland (LPD 27), the final ship in the 11-ship class, is expected to be completed in 2017.
COMMENT
Somerset is the final ship to be built at HII's Avondale Shipyard in Louisiana, which was blamed early on in the San Antonio-class programme for churning out poorly constructed amphibious transport dock ships. Build quality issues have plagued a number of the new platforms throughout the years. On board Somerset , for example, improperly installed bolts that fasten the main engine frames to ship hull foundations were discovered in August 2012. The defect was subsequently found on seventh-in-class Anchorage (LPD 23). In both cases, repairs were made to the ships prior to handover.
Originally scheduled to shutter upon completion of Somerset , Avondale is being converted to support HII in the energy sector. The two remaining San Antonio-class ships under construction, John P Murtha and Portland , are being built at Ingalls Shipbuilding's Pascagoula, Mississippi, yard.
Somerset is the third and final ship in the class to be named in honor of the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. USS New York (LPD 21) and USS Arlington (LPD 24) are the other two.
Incidentally, the lead ship of the class, USS San Antonio (LPD 17), garnered media attention recently for being the DoD's warship of choice to detain the suspected Al-Qaeda member Abu Anas al-Libi who was nabbed in Tripoli by US Special Forces on 5 October 2013. San Antonio is on its second operational deployment to the Middle East.
Jane Defense (IHS)
BTW, ini kapal ke 9 dengan nama Somerset dari Type San Antonio Class, dengan demikian US Navy masih menunggu John P. Murtha dan Portland untuk segera diselesaikan sesuai dengan kontrak
Dan info menarik dari kapal ini adalah armament untuk pertahanan dirinya lumayan mengerikan untuk kapal angkut sekelas LPD, berikut adalah armament yang dia bisa bawa
Armament: 2× Bushmaster II 30 mm close-in-guns
two Rolling Airframe Missile launchers
two Mk 41 eight-cell VLS for quad-packed ESSMs (if required)
Several twin M2 Browning machine gun turrets
Aircraft carried: Launch or land up to four CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters, or up to two MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft simultaneously with room to place four MV-22s on the flight deck and one in the hangar deck