LCS to be named Little Rock

Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced today that the next Freedom-class littoral combat ship will be named the USS Little Rock (LCS 9). Little Rock is the second ship to bear the name of the capital city in Arkansas. The first, a Cleveland-class light cruiser that served after World War II, was converted to a Galveston-class guided missile cruiser and is now a museum in Buffalo, N.Y. The new monohull Little Rock will be 378 feet long and built in Marinette, Wis., by a Lockheed Martin team. The other class of LCS, the Independence class, is an aluminum trimaran built in Mobile, Ala., by Austal USA. (Source: DoD, 07/15/11)