Austal-built LCS forward deploys

The USS Montgomery (LCS 8) arrived in the Philippines this past weekend on its maiden overseas deployment. It is the first time in 19 months that a Littoral Combat Ship has operated forward on deployment. USS Montgomery left from pierside of its San Diego homeport, later revealed as only late May, without an announced departure. But on June 29, the sea-service provided a media release and photographs of the LCS arriving in Davao City on the island of Mindanao. According to commercial ship tracking data, Montgomery made a port call in Hawaii and departed June 10 to continue its trip towards the 7th Fleet. The LCS went through the first-ever LCS Surface Warfare Advanced Tactical Training (SWATT) event in April as part of its pre-deployment workups. “In this era of Great Power Competition, the U.S. Pacific Fleet does not announce the deployment of every ship in the Pacific,” a Navy official told USNI News after this story was first published. “USS Montgomery departed its homeport of San Diego in late May, as part of a deployment to the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations.” USS Coronado (LCS 4) was the last LCS to deploy overseas, from June 2016 to December 2017. Since then, the LCS community has gone through a major reorganization that involves moving from a system of three crews supporting two ship hulls to a blue/gold crewing model; creation of a test division that includes the first four LCSs, which will now focus on mission package testing and other work at home and will not deploy overseas; standup of Littoral Combat Ship Squadron 1 (LCSRON-1) in San Diego that includes all Independence-variant ships; and the standup of LCSRON-2 in Mayport, Fla., for the Lockheed Martin-built Freedom-variant hulls. The Navy had not planned to have such a long gap between LCS deployments, but in part due to trying to implement the new organization and in part due to LCS hull maintenance availabilities, USNI News first reported in April 2018 that there would be no LCS deployments that calendar year. (Source: USNI News /7/01/19) Gulf Coast Note: LCS 8 and LCS 4 are Independence class ships built at Austal USA shipyard in Mobile, Ala.