US Navy newest warship, USS Independence LCS 2

My family and I were among the lucky few that got tickets for the tour. They sold out in
45 minutes. This is the newest class of Littoral Combat Ship (LCS).

This ship was built by General Dynamics in Mobile, Alabama.

USS Independence (LCS 2) has an overall length of 418-ft., maximum beam of 104 ft.
and full load displacement of 2,637 tons. The seaframe is based on Austal's all-aluminum
design for the Benchijigua Express passenger/car ferry. Two General Electric LM2500 22
MW gas turbines and two MTU 20V8000M90 9100 kW diesel engines are the prime
movers, powering four large steering and reversing Wärtsilä-Lips 2 X LJ160E and 2 X
LJ150E waterjets. Yes, there are a total of four water jet propulsion systems. Today they
said she can reach speed in excess of 50 knots.

This ship has the Raytheon Evolved SeaRAM missile defense system installed on the
hangar roof. The SeaRAM combines the sensors of the Phalanx 1B (Sea-Wiz gatling
gun) close-in weapon system with an 11-missile launcher for the Rolling Airframe
Missile (RAM), creating an autonomous system.

The ship was amazing, and they treated us like I was a 5 star, fleet admiral.

We had a LCDR (Lieutenant Commander) escorting us through, and at each
station, they had various specialists to explain stuff (within reason). Just a
few times they smiled and said, sorry we can not answer that.

We were taken just about everywhere, bridge, CIC, advanced weapons, flight deck,
launch bay, in the chopper, the remote submersible, even small and large handheld
weapons.

My son sat on the pilots seat in the chopper, sat in the captains chain on the bridge, sat at
a CIC station, and handled some rather large, 'small handheld' weapons.

They did tell me not to take any pictures of the consoles in CIC.

This ship had a crew of only 43 persons on board, and at present 3 of them are female.

Enjoy the photo tour!


click here for 81 USS INDEPENDENCE photos


overview

click here for 81 USS INDEPENDENCE photos

nice!

RadAL wrote in post #13086463
nice!

Thank you.

I hope you enjoyed the photo tour!

That thing is nuts!

Nice series
Awesome ship
I might ad Austal is an Aussie company based in Perth, Western Australia

What is the main purpose for this ship?

It looks like it was built to hunt pirate ships...

High speed military transport.

Ok.

Good series on it!

Nice series. Did you catch the ship when it was visiting St. Petersburg? Tickets went fast.

Cool...thanks for the pics! I knew the first CO of this ship (went thru some training with him) and a friend of mine is the CO (Commanding Officer for those who didn't know) of LCS-1 USS Freedom, same missions, different design (the Independence is a trimaran hull vice a single hull on the Freedom)...

FLphotoguy wrote in post #13104376
Nice series. Did you catch the ship when it was visiting St. Petersburg? Tickets went fast.

Yes, St. Pete.

Tickets sold out in 45 minutes. I was very fortunate to get mine!

Desertraptor wrote in post #13088872
Nice series
Awesome ship
I might ad Austal is an Aussie company based in Perth, Western Australia

they also have a real, REAL big ship yard here in mobile alabama, at least 2 or 3 big buildings.

Cool pictures and thanks for sharing. You don't really see very many shots from onboard these things. Isn't this the boat that is disintegrating faster than expected?

JHutch wrote in post #13113396
Cool pictures and thanks for sharing. You don't really see very many shots from onboard these things. Isn't this the boat that is disintegrating faster than expected?

Thank you!

Yes, there have been some corrision issues.