USS Halyburton Decommissioned

[nhboy]

Source.

"On Sept. 6, the U.S. Navy decommissioned the frigate USS Halyburton at the vessel’s home port in Florida.The 453-foot-long Oliver Hazard Perry-class vessel—named for a medic (William David Halyburton, Jr.)who died in the 1945 battle for Okinawa—spent just over 30 years in commission. Halyburton was many things in her decades of service. A sub-hunter, a counter-drug patroller, a famous pirate-fighter.

And, in her final years, the Navy’s very first modern combat drone carrier.

In June 2011, Halyburton joined an international force launching strikes on regime troops in Libya’s grinding civil war. The frigate carried two MQ-8B Fire Scout drone helicopters—and sent the ’bots over the Libyan coast to spot targets.

On June 21, regime troops apparently shot down one of the Fire Scouts. The Navy rushed a replacement drone to the frigate. In all, Halyburton’s Fire Scouts flew nearly 150 missions on that 2011 deployment, spotting targets with their nose-mounted video cameras and streaming the footage back to the ship for analysis and dissemination."

 

[ferdberfel]

Was on 2 FFGs, Curts-38 and Robert G Bradley-49 (plankowner). Best ships to be on back in the day. Had a crew of 196, 213 when they brought the brownshoes on. Loved going into ports where carriers couldn't go, and knowing everybody on the ship. Even had to go find the XO's car a couple times after extremely long nights!

 

[Monello]

FFGs were the walmarts of combatant ships. Back when Reagan was trying to bankrupt the Soviets, they popped out a whole bunch of frigates for next to nothing in DOD dollars. They never had enough space nor enough room for the proper manning.

I'm amazed they stuck around this long.

“The FFG-7 program has met with considerable criticism in recent years on several accounts. It has proved far more costly than originally planned: estimates of its unit cost rose from about $65 million to $168 million in constant dollars in just three years. At the same time, serious questions have been raised about its capabilities. Critics claim that the FFG lacks firepower and redundant sensors for operations in high-threat areas; that its single screw propulsion renders it vulnerable to attackers; that it lacks size and capacity for low-cost, mid-life modifications. Other critics have suggested that the FFG is too slow for conducting ASW operations against modern Soviet submarines. The House Armed Services Committee was particularly critical of the FFG program…”

http://blog.usni.org/2010/01/25/ffg-7-the-lcs-of-the-seventies

 

[ferdberfel]

FFGs were the walmarts of combatant ships. Back when Reagan was trying to bankrupt the Soviets, they popped out a whole bunch of frigates for next to nothing in DOD dollars. They never had enough space nor enough room for the proper manning.

I'm amazed they stuck around this long.


Well that was during the height of the cold war, and we had nothing that would stand up to Soviet subs in reality, that was our only threat at that time. The two I was on did manage to rattle the saber off the "line of death" (and a few other places in the Med), pull a few pilots out of the water and capture the first Iraqi POWs during PGW1.

During this time the only other options were Spruance or Kidd class destroyers, Knox class frigates, or the Vincennes class or Arleigh Burke which didn't really hit the fleet till late 80s. Gotta remember back then we had no "over the horizon" targeting, the quartermasters still used dead reckoning and sextant for navigation, sure they were tiny, but they worked better than the old boiler ships, had variable pitch propeller, and did the trick.