U.S. Undersea Warfare News

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USS will be the name of a future - became one of the older ships during its decorated sen,ice in class attack , Secretary of the Ray Naly Mabus World War lI. The battleship was armed with a dozen l2_inch announced Wednesday. guns with a 16,000-yard range. The submarine will be the fifth U.S. naval warship to The 562- battleship now lies in Bikini Atoll, be named after Arkansas, with each being a different type;f where it was purposely sunk in an underwater test of an ship. A sixth warship, the CSS Arkansas, was a Confedirate atomic bomb detonation in July 1946. The ship had stayed ironclad. afloat after a first test detonation rl,hen an atomic borlb n.as Construction of the USS Arkansas is to begin in dropped on the ship from a B-29 Superfortress. 2018 with a scheduled active service date of 2023, according The USS Arkansas was one of the last to a Navy news release announcing the name. Each Virginia- monitor warships built for the Nary-. It served in the Gulf of class submarine weighs 7,800 tons and is 377 feet in length. Mexico and with the Atlantic fleet until it was "Proud the USS Arkansas will be traveling the decommissioned in 1 919. world, protecting the US & sharing the story of AR The screw steamer USS Arkansas originally was everywhere it goes," Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in a Twitter named the Tonawanda untrl the Union used it as par of its post after the announcement. Navy in the iater years of the Cil,il War. The USS Arkansas name has been on a steamer ship The ironclad ram CSS Arkansas had a lifespan ol bought by the Union in 1863 during the Civil War and used only three weeks in the summer of 1862 when it fought its as a Union tender and supply ship; a monitor warship with a way through a gauntlet of 33 Union vessels on the single , commissioned in 1902; a battleship Mississippi River at Vicksburg, Miss. Sent to suppofi forces commissionedin that l9l2 served in both world wars; and a at Baton Rouge, the boat was scuttled to avoid capture after Virginia-class, nuclear-propelled guided-missile its engines failed. commissioned in 1980, according to a history of Arkansas- named ships at aimmuseum.org, the website for the Arkansas Back to Top Inland Maritime Museum in North Little Rock. "As we sail deeper into the 2lst century it is time for another USS Arkansas, time to keep that storied name alive in ,'She our Navy," Mabus said in the news release. will sail the world like those who have gone before her, defending the American people and representing our American values through presence." Mabus, a former governor of Mississippi, spent part of his 1971-72naval. service aboard the now-decommissioned cruiser USS Little Rock, one of two naval vessels named for Arkansas' capital city. The other USS Little Rock, a , is to be commissioned this year. Virginia-class attack "provide the Navy with the capabilities required to maintain the nation's undersea supremacy," having features of "enhanced stealth, sophisticated surveillance capabilities and special warfare enhancements," according to the Navy's news release. The submarines in this class, each with a beam of 34 feet, can operate at more than25 knots submerged. The submarines have the capability to fire missiles at targets ashore and to conduct covert, long-term surveillance ofland areas, near-shore wars or sea-based forces, according to the Navy. Other mission types include special forces delivery and support, anti-submarine and anti-ship warfare, mine delivery, and minefield mapping. The last vessel to bear Arkansas' name was the nuclear-powered guided-missile cruiser that was decommissioned in the late 1990s. It was the last of four Virginia-class nqclear to be decommissioned. The longest-serving USS Arkansas was the Wyoming-class battleship commissioned in 1912, which