According to a PR published by Bollinger Shipyards on March 7, 2023, the firm officially commenced construction of the future USNS Muscogee Creek Nation, the tenth Navajo-class Towing, Salvage, and Rescue Ship (“T-ATS”) and the fifth T-ATS vessel being constructed by Bollinger since acquiring the program in April of 2021.
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Steel cutting ceremony of Navajo class T-ATS USNS Muscogee Creek Nation. (Picture source: Bollinger Shipyards)
The Navajo-class provides ocean-going tug, salvage, and rescue capabilities to support fleet operations, and are tasked with coming to the aid of stricken vessels.
Their general mission capabilities include combat salvage, lifting, towing, retraction of grounded vessels, off-ship firefighting, and manned diving operations.
The T-ATS platform replaces and fulfills the capabilities that were previously provided by the Powhatan-class Fleet Ocean Tug (T-ATF 166) and Safeguard-class Rescue and Salvage Ships (T-ARS 50) class ships.
In addition to T-ATS 10, Bollinger is constructing USNS Navajo (T-ATS 6), USNS Cherokee Nation (T-ATS 7), USNS Saginaw Ojibwe Anishinabek (T-ATS 8) and the USNS Lenni Lenape (T-ATS 9).
About the Navajo-class Towing, Salvage and Rescue Ship Platform
The Navajo-class is a multi-mission common hull platform that will be deployed to support a range of missions such as towing, rescue, salvage, humanitarian assistance, oil spill response, and wide-area search and surveillance operations using unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV) and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).
The vessels will replace the existing Powhatan-class T-ATF fleet ocean tugs and Safeguard-class T-ARS rescue and salvage ships in service with the US Military Sealift Command.
The vessel has a displacement of 5,110 long tons (5,190 t). She has a length of 263 ft (80 m), a beam of 59 ft (18 m), a draft of 17.7 ft (5.4 m), and a depth of 24.6 ft (7.5 m).
The ship is powered by two diesel engines, specifically Wartsila 8L32 engines that generate 6308 horsepower each, allowing her to achieve a speed of 15.1 knots (28.0 km/h; 17.4 mph). The ship has a range of 8,170 nautical miles (15,130 km; 9,400 mi) and can accommodate a crew of 42 sailors.
