Article Posted on : - Oct 20, 2014

The seventh littoral combat ship, the future USS Detroit, was christened and launched into the Menominee River in Marinette, Wisconsin on October 18. A Lockheed Photo

MARINETTE, WISCONSIN (BNS): Lockheed Martin has launched the seventh Littoral Combat Ship (LCS 7) for the US Navy in the Menominee River at the Marinette Marine Corporation shipyard on October 18.

The new warship, christened Detroit, will continue to undergo outfitting and testing before delivery to the Navy in 2015.

The US Navy awarded the contract to construct the Detroit in March 2011. The ship is one of five LCS currently under construction at Marinette Marine.

LCS 7 is the fourth ship of the Freedom-class Littoral Combat Ships and the seventh in the class.

The LCS, being developed in two variants, has been envisioned as a versatile, networked, agile, surface combatant vessel capable of defeating anti-access and asymmetric threats in the littorals.

While Austal USA is building the Independence-class aluminum trimaran LCSs, Lockheed Martin is developing the Freedom-class semiplaning monohull ships.

The US Navy so far has received four of the warships -- USS Freedom (LCS 1) and USS Fort Worth (LCS 3) from Lockheed, and USS Independence (LCS 2) and USS Coronado (LCS 4) from Austal.

The Navy had earlier intended to procure a total of 52 such ships, but budgetary curtailment has set the limit for procuring 32 LCSs even as Pentagon plans to reevaluate the entire programme before the fiscal year 2016 budget submission.