Saturday, a Lockheed Martin led team held a keel-laying ceremony at Marinette Marine’s shipyard for the USS Fort Worth, marking the start of construction for the U.S. Navy’s third Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). The future USS Fort Worth, named in honor of the Texas city, will be 378 feet in length, have a waterline beam of 57 feet, displace approximately 3,000 tons and will make speed in excess of 40 knots.
LCS is a new breed of agile warships that are designed to operate in the world’s coastal waters and provide the Navy with fast, maneuverable and shallow-draft ships aimed at maximizing mission flexibility. [Continue Reading →]
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Tags: · LCS, Navy, U.S. Navy, warship
Want to know more about The Protector? Popular Mechanics tells us;
Robots versus pirates—it’s not as stupid, or unlikely, as it sounds. Piracy has exploded in the waters near Somalia, where this past week United States warships have fired on two pirate skiffs, and are currently in pursuit of a hijacked Japanese-owned vessel. At least four other ships in the region remain under pirate control, and the problem appears to be going global: The International Maritime Bureau is tracking a 14-percent increase in worldwide pirate attacks this year.
The Protector, which comes mounted with a 7.62mm machine gun, wasn’t originally intended for anti-piracy operations. But according to BAE Systems spokesperson Stephanie Moncada, the robot could easily fill that role. “Down the line, it could potentially be modified for commercial use as well,” she says. Instead of being deployed by a warship to intercept and possibly fire on an incoming vessel, a non-lethal variant of the Protector could be used to simply investigate a potential threat. Continue Reading…
Also be sure to check out BitterEnd’s video find: Tres Cool – RIB boarding a Chinook
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