USS Arkansas will be the name of a future Virginia-class attack submarine, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced Wednesday.
The submarine will be the fifth U.S. naval warship to be named after Arkansas, with each being a different type of ship. A sixth warship, the CSS Arkansas, was a Confederate ironclad.
Construction of the USS Arkansas is to begin in 2018 with a scheduled active service date of 2023, according to a Navy news release announcing the name. Each Virginia-class submarine weighs 7,800 tons and is 377 feet in length.
"Proud the USS Arkansas will be traveling the world, protecting the US & sharing the story of AR everywhere it goes," Gov. Asa Hutchinson said in a Twitter post after the announcement.
The USS Arkansas name has been on a steamer ship bought by the Union in 1863 during the Civil War and used as a Union tender and supply ship; a monitor warship with a single gun turret, commissioned in 1902; a battleship commissioned in 1912 that served in both world wars; and a Virginia-class, nuclear-propelled guided-missile cruiser commissioned in 1980, according to a history of Arkansas-named ships at aimmuseum.org, the website for the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum in North Little Rock.
"As we sail deeper into the 21st century it is time for another USS Arkansas, time to keep that storied name alive in our Navy," Mabus said in the news release. "She 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 1971-72 naval 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 littoral combat ship, is to be commissioned this year.
Virginia-class attack submarines "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 than 25 knots submerged. The submarines have the capability to fire Tomahawk missiles at targets ashore and to conduct covert, long-term surveillance of land 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 nuclear cruisers to be decommissioned.
The longest-serving USS Arkansas was the Wyoming-class battleship commissioned in 1912, which became one of the older ships during its decorated service in World War II. The battleship was armed with a dozen 12-inch guns with a 16,000-yard range.
The 562-foot battleship now lies in Bikini Atoll, where it was purposely sunk in an underwater test of an atomic bomb detonation in July 1946. The ship had stayed afloat after a first test detonation when an atomic bomb was dropped on the ship from a B-29 Superfortress.
The monitor USS Arkansas was one of the last monitor warships built for the Navy. It served in the Gulf of Mexico and with the Atlantic fleet until it was decommissioned in 1919.
The screw steamer USS Arkansas originally was named the Tonawanda until the Union used it as part of its Navy in the later years of the Civil War.
The ironclad ram CSS Arkansas had a lifespan of only three weeks in the summer of 1862 when it fought its way through a gauntlet of 33 Union vessels on the Mississippi River at Vicksburg, Miss. Sent to support forces at Baton Rouge, the boat was scuttled to avoid capture after its engines failed.
Metro on 06/16/2016