The USS Kingsville is officially a part of the U.S. Navy. The ship was commissioned on Saturday, Aug. 24 at the Solomon P. Ortiz Center in Corpus Christi, Texas.
The USS Kingsville, an Independence-class littoral combat ship, is the second-to-last of its type to be commissioned, with only the USS Pierre left to enter service out of the 19 total Independence-class ships. It’s the first ship in the Navy to bear the name, which honors Kingsville, Texas, where the Navy has an air station.
“A ship commissioning is one of the ways the U.S. Navy keeps itself tied to the nation it serves. It’s why we name ships after cities and states. And what better moment to celebrate our long and intimate relationship than commissioning a ship named after Kingsville,” Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Financial Management and Comptroller Russell Rumbaugh said at the ceremony. “This ship will provide maritime security in each of our fleet operations. We in the Department of the Navy are proud of the littoral combat ships.”
Despite what Rumbaugh said, the Navy has a troubled relationship with the ships. Even as the USS Kingsville joins the ranks of the Navy’s surface fleets, the littoral combat ship is on the way out. The Navy already is decommissioning several vessels while also working on selling multiple Freedom and Independence-class littoral combat ships to other nations’ navies.
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The class of ship was meant to serve as a multipurpose vessel operating near coasts. It was designed with the goal of being able to target submarines and coastal defenses, while providing support to focus on land. The Navy describes littoral combat ships as “fast, optimally manned, mission-tailored surface combatants” but the program has been overrun with delays, high costs and malfunctions in service. They gained the “little crappy ships” nickname as a result. Worse, the ships found themselves left behind as the military shifts towards peer-to-peer strategies, rather than counterinsurgency.
Recently the Navy said that several Independence-class littoral combat ships would serve as part of a mine countermeasures force, using new upgrades to take out any underwater explosives.
The USS Kingsville is set to go to Naval Station San Diego, currently home to more than a dozen littoral combat ships.