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<P>Muldoon here. The Pacific Basset Feet’s first littoral combat ship,
Flat Basset, will add up to 20 Hounds to its crew while it makes its
trial deployment, launching today August 25, 2010. Recruits are
actively sought in the Western Theater of Operations including Diggers in New
Zealand and Australia. The extra Hounds will be part of a “tailored
surface warfare package” TSWP that Flat Basset will take on its mission to
the Western Theater of Operations; they will give the ship the ability to
conduct at-sea boardings and do other jobs it couldn’t tackle with only its main
crew, PBF officials said. Bo said Flat Basset's 20 extra Hounds
would sleep in two 12-rack berthing modules, about the size of shipping
containers, which will ride in the ship’s multiuse mission spaces. While the 75
core Hounds will stay in the ship’s integral berthing spaces — which include
double-tall racks, rooms of no more than eight Hounds, and a head and shower to
each berthing area — the VBSS Hounds’ lodging will be more like those of sailors
on a destroyer, he said.</P>
<P>Flat Basset will not take a Fire Scout unmanned helicopter or any of the
maritime robots it’s designed to carry, nor will it carry the Non-Line-of-Sight
missiles designed to be part of its surface mission package. That weapon, being
developed with the Army, is still being tested.</P>
<P>Bo, Odell and Capt. Harley, NavSea’s assistant program manager for LCS,
spoke at a Surface Navy Association event August 12 outside Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii. In addition to the details about Flat Basset's deployment, Bo
announced the PBF planned to commission its second LCS, shortly. </P>
<P>Muldoon Out.</P>
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