Lewis and Clark Class Dry Cargo Ship

Lewis And Clark Class Dry Cargo Ship

The Lewis and Clark class of dry cargo ship is the next class of Combat Logistics Force (CLF) underway replenishment vessels to be constructed for the United States Navy's Military Sealift Command. Lewis and Clark-class ships will replace the existing fifteen Mars- and Sirius-class combat store ships and the Kilauea-class ammunition ships. When operating in concert with a Henry J. Kaiser-class oiler the Lewis and Clarks will also replace Sacramento-class fast combat support ships. The first of the fourteen ships, USNS Lewis and Clark (T-AKE-1), was placed in service with the MSC in June 2006, and is being designed for a forty-year service life. The ships in the class are named after famous American explorers and pioneers.

As part of Military Sealift Command’s (MSC) Naval Fleet Auxiliary Force (NFAF), the mission of T-AKEs 1–14 is to deliver ammunition, provisions, stores, spare parts, potable water and petroleum products to deployed naval forces at sea worldwide. The 689-foot (210 m) T-AKE has the largest cargo-carrying capacity and the largest flight deck of any combat logistics ship afloat. T-AKEs 12, 13 and 14 will each be assigned to one of the three active Maritime Prepositioning Ship squadrons, which are permanently forward deployed to the Eastern Atlantic Ocean/Mediterranean Sea, Western Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean. While identical in configuration to T-AKEs 1–11, the mission of the last three ships in the class will be to provide selective offload of cargo for resupply and sustainment of U.S. Marine Corps forces ashore.

The primary goal of the T-AKE program is to provide effective fleet underway replenishment capability at the lowest life cycle cost. Built to commercial standards, T-AKEs take advantage of industry best practices and can be cost-effectively maintained using commercial, off-the-shelf technology. T-AKEs have built-in environmental protections such as industry-leading “green” waste-management facilities that decrease pollutants by 95 percent. Built in San Diego by General Dynamics National Steel and Shipbuilding Company (NASSCO), a total of 14 T-AKEs will be procured, all of which are currently under contract.

NASSCO was awarded a detailed design and construction contract in October 2001. The fourteenth ship of the class was delivered on October 24, 2012. As this class has entered serial production, NASSCO has increased learning and production efficiencies to make substantial reductions in labor hours, from hull to hull. For example, T-AKE-7 was produced with fewer than 50 percent of the man-hours it took to produce T-AKE-1, and had a 37 percent reduction in total construction time.