USS Paul F. Foster (DD 964) moored at Everett Naval Station

Built by Ingalls Shipbuilding in Pascagoula, MS in 1973/4, USS Paul F. Foster (DD 964) was the 2nd ship of the Spruance-class and is the only one left that hasn’t either been destroyed by missiles, torpedos, gunfire, or acetylene torch.

Since her decommissioning in 2003, her maneuvering and propulsion controls have been replaced by computerized systems that allow her to be remotely controlled.  Her new role as a Self Defense Test Ship requires that she be unmanned as it involves live-fire exercises at a barge towed 150-feet astern.  At 563 feet in length and 8,000 tons, she may very well be the world’s largest remote control vehicle.

As a newly frocked Ensign assigned to her between 2000 and 2002, my shipmates and I deployed to the Persian Gulf in 2001 in support of UN Security Council Resolution 687.  With the support of SEAL Team 2, we boarded over 100 ships bound for Iraqi waters.

This image was taken while she was sitting pierside at Naval Station Everett, WA in 2002.  The USS Fife (DD 991) is moored in the background.

The USNI blog tells us why container based cruise missiles might not be so far off in their latest edition of The Problem With Proliferation: Cruise Missile Edition:

Fiction you say? Perhaps — for now. However, given long-running trends and recent events, the threat to deployed forces, afloat and ashore, has continued to grow in size and capabilities. And now, the nightmare of many a defense analyst is coming to the light of day — the ability to conduct an attack on the homeland in a manner that is directly unattributable to one or more nations . . . for you see, the Russian arms manufacturer, Novator, through a front company, is offering the Club-K system, a four-tube launcher, plus all support facilities, inside a standard ISO shipping container.

And customers? Yes — they’ve got a client list. Such is the post-Cold War world and the state of cruise missile proliferation that an ostensibly ‘private’ company can offer for sale the latest cruise missile packaged in a manner that enables state and non-state actors to carry out surreptitious campaigns that subvert the norms of international behavior and the laws of war.

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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.

The LCS is a fast, highly manoeuverable, networked surface combat ship, which is a specialised variant of the family of US future surface combat ships known as DD(X). LCS is designed to satisfy the urgent requirement for shallow draft vessels to operate in the littoral (coastal waters) to counter growing potential ‘asymmetric’ threats of coastal mines, quiet diesel submarines and the potential to carry explosives and terrorists on small, fast, armed boats. (Naval-Technology.com)

In March 2009, the Navy awarded the Lockheed Martin team a fixed price incentive fee contract to construct the USS Fort Worth, scheduled to be delivered in 2012. The team’s first LCS, USS Freedom, was commissioned in Milwaukee in November 2008.

General Dynamics was awarded the contract for USS Independence (LCS 2) in October 2005. The keel was laid in January 2006 at the Austal USA shipyard in Mobile, Alabama and it is expected to be commissioned this year.

LINK -  Lockheed Martin Team Lays Keel On Nation’s Third Littoral Combat Ship, Fort Worth

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