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June 3 (UPI) -- Lockheed Martin was awarded a $9.3 million contract to provide post shakedown availability on the U.S. Navy's future USS Billings, a littoral combat ship undergoing sea trials. The contract will provide advance planning, accomplishment and emergent availabilities for the ship, designated as LCS-15, the U.S. Defense Department announced Friday.
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Sixty-five percent of the work will be performed at Lockheed Martin's Mission Systems and Training plant in Mayport, Fla., where the ship will be homeported, 15 percent in Hampton, Va., 10 percent in the District of Columbia, and 5 percent each in Baltimore and Camden, N.J.
The work is expected to be completed by January 2021.
Naval fiscal 2019 and 2013 shipbuilding and conversion funding in the amount of $8.6 million will be obligated at time of award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year.
The Billings will be homeported with the USS Milwaukee, USS Detroit, USS Little Rock, USS Sioux City and USS Wichita.
The U.S. Navy accepted delivery of the Billings in February in a ceremony at Fincantieri Marinette Marine shipyard in Marinette, Wis.
The USS Billings, which is named after the city in Montana, is the 17th littoral combat ship delivered to the Navy and eighth of the Freedom variant to join the fleet.
The vessel will be commissioned on August 3 in Key West, Fla. The Billings will then be "tasked with near-shore multi-purpose missions that utilize her ability to deploy and recover landing craft and helicopters," the U.S. Navy said.
Lockheed Martin and Fincantieri Marinette Marine began construction in October 2014 and the vessel was launched in July 2017.
Five Freedom-variant destroyers are currently being constructed in the Wisconsin shipyard.
The Independence-variant of the ship is produced by Austal and General Dynamics in Mobile, Ala.
Littoral combat ships support focused mine countermeasures, anti-submarine warfare and surface warfare missions.
