The future USS Jackson made its way down the Mobile River on a recent Tuesday morning for a builder’s sea trial, a milestone step in the ship’s path toward delivery to the U.S. Navy.
The Jackson, designated LCS 6, is the third vessel in the Independence-variant class of littoral combat ships and holds a notable distinction: it is the first LCS built with Austal USA serving as the prime contractor, rather than as a subcontractor on the program. The ship was scheduled for delivery to the Navy later in the summer.
The vessel is part of Austal’s broader $3.5 billion, ten-ship block-buy contract with the Navy to build Independence-class littoral combat ships at its Mobile shipyard, a program that has become one of the region’s most significant defense and manufacturing commitments. Around the same time the Jackson was undergoing its builder’s trial, the future USS Montgomery was also moving toward acceptance trials at the same shipyard, part of a steady pipeline of vessels moving through various stages of construction along the Mobile riverfront.
Builder’s sea trials mark one of the final major checkpoints before a ship is formally accepted by the Navy, allowing the shipbuilder to test propulsion, navigation and other core systems on the water before the vessel undergoes acceptance trials and is ultimately delivered to the fleet. For a ship built at Austal’s Mobile facility, the short trip down the Mobile River to open water represents the culmination of years of module construction and assembly work carried out largely by the shipyard’s South Alabama workforce.
The littoral combat ship program has been a major economic driver for the Mobile area, supporting thousands of jobs at Austal’s shipyard as the company works through its multi-ship Navy contract. Each ship that reaches the sea trial stage represents another step toward completing that pipeline, with several additional Independence-class vessels in various stages of construction at the yard at the time of the Jackson’s trial.