USS ''Tulsa'' (LCS-16) is an of the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

. She is the third ship to be named for

Tulsa Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with ...

, second-largest city in the U.S. state of Oklahoma.

Design

In 2002, the

initiated a program to develop the first of a fleet of

littoral combat ship The littoral combat ship (LCS) is either of two classes of relatively small surface vessels designed for operations near shore by the United States Navy. It was "envisioned to be a networked, agile, stealthy surface combatant capable of defeat ...

s. The Navy initially ordered two trimaran hulled ships from General Dynamics, which became known as the after the first ship of the class, . Even-numbered U.S. Navy littoral combat ships are built using the ''Independence''-class trimaran design, while odd-numbered ships are based on a competing design, the conventional

monohull right A monohull is a type of boat having only one hull, unlike multihulled boats which can have two or more individual hulls connected to one another. Fundamental concept Among the earliest hulls were simple logs, but these were generally unst ...

. The initial order of littoral combat ships involved a total of four ships, including two of the ''Independence''-class design. On 29 December 2010, the Navy announced that it was awarding Austal USA a contract to build ten additional ''Independence''-class littoral combat ships.

Construction and career

''Tulsa'' was constructed by

Austal USA Austal USA is an American shipbuilder based on Blakeley Island in Mobile, Alabama. It is a subsidiary of the Australian shipbuilder Austal, operating under a Special Security Arrangement which allows it to work independently and separately on ...

in Mobile, Alabama. A keel laying ceremony, which usually signifies the startìng of ship construction, was held at the Austal shipyards in Mobile on 11 January 2016, but because the ship was assembled from prefabricated modules, ''Tulsa'' was already 60 percent complete at the time. Kathy Taylor, former mayor of Tulsa, served as ship's sponsor. ''Tulsa'' was christened on 11 February 2017, launched on 16 March 2017, and commissioned on 16 February 2019. She has been assigned to Littoral Combat Ship Squadron One ''Tulsa'' returned to

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United State ...

on 30 July 2022 following deployment.

References

External links

* Independence-class littoral combat ships 2017 ships {{US-mil-ship-stub