Huntington Ingalls delivers ship to Navy

PASCAGOULA — Huntington Ingalls Industries has delivered the company’s sixth amphibious transport dock, San Diego (LPD 22), to the U.S. Navy. The ship was delivered in a brief ceremony at Ingalls Shipbuilding.

San Diego recently completed acceptance sea trials with the Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey observing. Ingalls’ test and trials team thoroughly tested the ship’s main propulsion, steering, communications suite and deck missions systems. Some of the crew members were aboard for acceptance trials; the full crew will move aboard the ship the first week of January.

LPD 22 is scheduled to be commissioned in the spring of 2012 in San Diego. It is the fourth ship named in honor of the military town and largest Navy base in the Pacific.

San Antonio-class ships are 684 feet long and 105 feet wide and displace approximately 25,000 tons. Their principal mission is to deploy the combat and support elements of Marine Expeditionary Units and Brigades. The ships can carry up to 800 troops and have the capability of transporting and debarking landing craft air cushion (LCAC) or conventional landing crafts, augmented by helicopters or vertical take-off and landing aircraft such as the MV-22. The ships will support amphibious assault, special operations or expeditionary warfare missions through the first half of the 21st century.

Ingalls has now built and delivered the first six ships in the class, and there are four more under construction.