When the U.S. House Appropriations Committee passed its version of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act on a 32-26 vote in June, a ticking clock began.
Within the $762 billion budget was a request from the Navy to decommission 39 warships in the 2023 fiscal year.
Among those: the ship graced with the name of Arkansas' state capital.
If and when President Joe Biden signs the final defense budget, the USS Little Rock (LCS-9) would be set for decommissioning on March 31.
That would end the Little Rock's tenure in the fleet only six years after it was commissioned in 2017.
The USS Little Rock, currently stationed with the Surface Division 21 in Mayport, Fla., according to a Navy spokesperson, is one of nine Freedom-class Littoral Combat Ships the Navy has proposed decommissioning.
The Little Rock and its sister ships, which can include crews of up to 110, are high-speed vessels designed for use in shallow-water operations, including being used against the drug trade and other forms of trafficking.
However, during its tenure, the LCS has been plagued by problems with a combining gear flaw in the propulsion system. According to Defensenews.com, two of the Freedom-class LCSs, including the Little Rock, suffered major failures while at sea in 2020. The Little Rock's occurred six weeks after it departed Mayport on its first deployment, forcing it to return to port with propulsion problems.
U.S. Rep. Steve Womack, who represents Arkansas' 3rd Congressional District and sits on the Appropriations Committee, voted to approve the defense budget.
Womack called the "whole" LCS tenure, which began in 2006 with the launching of the USS Freedom (it was decommissioned in September 2021), a "sad chapter in the history of the Navy."
"It just had a lot of flaws," Womack said. "It's sad that the USS Little Rock is one of those out of the Freedom class. The Freedom class had more problems than the others, but the entire LCS program has suffered from a lot of setbacks."
Womack believes the Freedom class, in part because of the combination gear issue, is "incapable of meeting all of the demands that are going to be required of our naval forces going forward.
"In the development stages of the platform, I think it's suffered from a lack of oversight," Womack continued. "Could have been too many cooks in the kitchen. We've got flaws scattered throughout our entire acquisition system that we're trying to sort out and the LCS is probably Navy's biggest example of how we put something together, failed to meet all of the principal objectives, buy a bunch of them and then regret doing it. These are expensive and every dollar spent on a failed and flawed acquisition program is another dollar that we can't apply toward acquisition of proven programs that serve our national defense."
According to Defensenews.com, Rear Adm. John Gumbleton, the deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for budget, told reporters earlier this year that the nine LCS vessels cost $4.5 billion. Individually, an LCS costs about $362 million, according to a 2015 report.
However, there is a future for some of the LCSs.
According to USNI News in August, the Senate Armed Services Committee version of the NDAA -- introduced to the Senate floor Oct. 11 -- would have stopped the decommissioning of five of the nine littoral combat ships on the list. Meanwhile, the language in the House Appropriations Committee's version, which passed the full House on July 14, would have prevented four from being decommissioned.
However, Womack said, "that does not save the USS Little Rock."
In the most updated list of potential decommissioned ships shared by a Navy spokesperson, the Little Rock was not among the LCS ships labeled to be saved from decommissioning by either the House or Senate versions.
At the end of the day, the USS Little Rock is not long for the U.S. Navy fleet upon the signing of the budget.
"It is what it is and we need to basically cut our losses and move on and learn from it," said Womack, who hopes the surviving LCSs can be used in other areas of responsibility, including operations around Central and South America and Africa.
Once the NDAA is approved by President Biden, the decommissioning of the Little Rock would be set in stone.
What does that process entail?
According to a Navy spokesperson, the secretary of the Navy approves changes to the status of all naval vessels, acting on recommendations made by the chief of naval operations. Once a non-nuclear-powered ship has been designated for inactivation, the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) and the Surface Ship Maintenance, Modernization and Sustainment Directorate (SEA 21) take responsibility for managing the inactivation, storage and disposal of the vessels.
After the ships are inactivated, they are delivered to one of three Inactive Ships Maintenance Offices. They are in Bremerton, Wash., Philadelphia and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
At those locations, the ships undergo periodic maintenance and inspections that allow for their long-term storage as their final disposition status is determined. Final disposition may include ship transfer or sale to a foreign navy, donation, dismantlement or sinking during fleet training exercises.
The Navy's Ship Donation Program is how the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum was able secure the USS Hoga (YT-146).
A Woban-class district harbor tug, the Hoga was commissioned in May 1941 and played a pivotal role in the rescue efforts during and after Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor six months later.
The process of acquiring the Hoga wasn't a simple one for the maritime museum. The Navy awarded ownership of the Hoga to North Little Rock on July 28, 2005, after it beat out four other groups for the boat.
"The Hoga, we started on her in 2002," said Greg Zonner, executive director of the museum. "With all paperwork and everything that we went through, we finally had her in (November) 2015. So it took us 12 years, 13 years to get here. ... That's the Navy and it's paperwork. There's a lot to it."
Could a process like that result in the USS Little Rock ever finding a port in its namesake?
Don't count on it for two reasons: history and geography.
Working against the USS Little Rock in its post-service era would be its relatively short lifespan.
Where its predecessor -- the cruiser USS Little Rock (CL-92) -- was commissioned in 1945 and refit in the late 1950s before serving until 1976 and retired to Buffalo, N.Y., as a maritime museum, the current ship would end its service after just over six years on the seas.
"The bad thing about it is she has no history," Zonner said. "So she's really not something you could make a museum ship out of."
While the USS Razorback, a WWII-era submarine, was able to be transported up the Arkansas River to Little Rock in 2004 with the occasional help of two barges, it just can't be done with the USS Little Rock.
"The infrastructure is not in place," said Jay Townsend, chief of public affairs for the Little Rock District Corps of Engineers. "We have the Arkansas River navigation system that has 9-foot navigation depth and minimum bridge clearance on the system for navigation is 52 feet. ... The beam on the USS Little Rock, the top of it is 66 feet. So that right there it's already too tall. But then, we have a 9-foot channel on the Arkansas River and ... we have a 9-foot draft on the Arkansas River. ... (The Little Rock) sits too low in the water and it's too tall, by 10 feet on both sides."
Even Townsend expressed a touch of disappointment in the impossibility of the city hosting the ship with its name.
"It would be a sight to see that thing in downtown," Townsend said.