BUFFALO, N.Y. — Buffalo was actually the site of US Navy history back on December 16, 2017, as for the first time ever a Navy ship was commissioned in a ceremony and put in service right next to its namesake - the former Navy cruiser Little Rock which is now that big museum ship berthed at the Buffalo Naval and Military Park.
The history for that relatively new version of a Navy ship with that dame name is unfortunately short-lived.
It was the Navy's traditional and ceremonial start of service on that cold, snowy December day in Buffalo as the crew did run up the gangplanks to "man the ship" and thus begin USS Little Rock Littoral Combat Combat Ship # 9's Naval service.
We showed you back then how the ship was actually built at a Wisconsin shipyard at a cost of over $350 Million dollars. There were even shipboard tours to help explain its new technology and potential missions of everything from special operations with Navy Seals and offshore support of landed troops to anti-submarine warfare.
One officer explained for 2 On Your Side back then that the ship had a sophisticated camera to use with its main deck gun on the bow. "That's the camera that the gunner would use to focus the weapon on."
But we also told you about the ship unfortunately getting stuck in the St., Lawrence River ice for three months in Montreal while it was underway to its assigned home base in Mayport, Florida. And then there was talk about the Pentagon's whole supposedly "transformational" low-cost LCS program,
But the concept got panned and then pulled apart by politicians on Capitol Hill. Chris Cavas, a Maryland-based naval warfare journalist and commentator with the CavasShips podcast, gave us an example. "The Navy was told to operate this ship with a crew of 40. Nobody ever said we could do it with 40. They were told to make it work with 40. It turns out that you can't."
The eventual crew size was about twice that number.
But there were also sea-side problems with the sophisticated ship propulsion technology which allowed the warship to be fast and maneuverable. It was a warship acting like a jet ski according to some.
But in some cases, LCS ships had to be towed back to base. Officials at the Pentagon eventually decided some of these ships like the Little Rock, with the Freedom hull design built by a Lockheed Martin subsidiary, were just too expensive to maintain and operate.
The Navy is quietly keeping other LCS ships in service so far. That includes ships with a different hull design and a different shipbuilder.
"They've done a lot of work on these ships that they are now de-commissioning. So theoretically they run fine. And now they're still getting rid of 'em. "
"It is sad, It's an expensive lesson. There are things these ships can do that the Navy doesn't wanna do. Mostly because of culture in many ways. There's still a lot of use in these ships. They are not useless."
Cavas also says in his opinion this would have been a good so-called.
"Mother ship" platform for the Navy to launch surface and underwater drones as it tries to counter what seems feel to be a threat by the Chinese Navy and its major shipbuilding program.
US Navy Public Affairs Officer Lt. Ayifa Brooks says after the decommissioning ceremony in Florida on Friday, this new Little Rock will then be sent to the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Cavas expects it will then be put up for sale to a foreign navy to be used again as a foreign-flagged warship.
He does not expect that to be Ukraine because any ships are tempting targets at this point. But he does say countries like Greece or Central America might be interested in such a purchase.
"I am sure that just about all these Littoral Combat Ships that leave service - the US Navy will haul down the American flag and then be hauled up a foreign nation's - a friendly foreign nation's flag and have long lives ahead of them in somebody else's navy. It'll be a bargain for them."
USS Little Rock LCS 9 recently participated in drug interdiction missions with a task force working off the coast of South America.
As for the lingering Buffalo connection, Naval Parks President Paul Marzello and Chairman of the 2017 Commissioning Event Committee Maurice Naylon III, along with others, will actually go to Florida to observe the formal decommissioning ceremony of LCS 9 USS Little Rock on Friday.