Sioux City, Iowa — Iowa Senator Joni Ernst says it is just a matter of time before the USS Sioux City and the other littoral combat ships in its class are decommissioned. Ernst, a Republican from Red Oak, serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee and says the Navy will mothball the ships.
The littoral combat ships were supposed to be smaller and faster and serve as anti-submarine and mine ships. But they proved to have several issues and were expensive to maintain. Senator Ernst is not happy the Navy allowed the people of Sioux City to spend thousands of dollars to help fund the commissioning of their namesake ship.
The USS Sioux City was commissioned at Annapolis, Maryland on November 17th of 2018. Ernst says a lot of money has been wasted on these ships.
There was some discussion the Department of Homeland Security might want the ships for drug interdiction missions, but Ernst says nobody wants them.
Ernst says the ships cost 50 million dollars a year to maintain, and some of the 13 ships in the class have develop cracks in their hulls. The Senator says the Navy has not set an official date to decommission the Sioux City yet. She says it could be a couple of weeks all the way to a couple of years before that happens.
