USS Beloit to be commissioned in Milwaukee Saturday

Since World War II, Fairbanks Morse Defense in Beloit has been building engines for the U.S. military.

A new Wisconsin-built naval warship will honor those contributions with its name: the USS Beloit.

Retired Army Maj. Gen. Marcia Anderson, a Beloit native, will commission the ship for active duty this weekend by uttering the ceremonial order of “Man our ship and bring her to life!”

The ceremony will take place at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Nov. 23 at Veterans Park in downtown Milwaukee. It will also be livestreamed online.

The Fincantieri Marinette Marine shipyard in northeast Wisconsin delivered the ship to the Navy two years ago. Since then, its crew has been preparing for the commissioning.

“We started off, basically, in buildings, and we create our programs and establish what the culture is going to be,” said Cmdr. Leandra Kissinger, who will become the USS Beloit’s commanding officer Saturday. Six months ago, the crew boarded the ship to begin practice trials.

“It’s the first time that the ship comes alive,” she said of Saturday’s ceremony.

Kissinger, who is originally from Los Alamos, New Mexico, has visited Beloit several times in her role as prospective commanding officer.

“That community is full of hard-working people who just really are excited that a small town of 36,000 people was selected to have a warship named after them,” she said.

She said the commissioning was scheduled in Milwaukee so that people from Beloit could easily attend.

Ship one of many built in Marinette under naval contract with Fincantieri, Lockheed Martin

The USS Beloit is a Freedom-class littoral combat ship, a relatively small ship intended for near-shore combat.

The Marinette Marine shipyard has been churning out warships since its World War II founding. Italian company Fincantieri bought it in 2009, with U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin as minority investor. The shipyard has built all of the Navy’s Freedom-class ships. The USS Beloit will be its 15th.

Lockheed provided the Freedom-class ships’ design, and furnished them with some of their operating systems.

“When you think about shipbuilding, you really don’t think about that being built in a lake,” said Ann Franz, executive director of the North Coast Marine Manufacturing Alliance. “But Great Lakes are really why we call our organization the North Coast, because we are a coast — we can get ships out to the Atlantic Ocean from the Great Lakes.”

Franz’s organization includes several shipyards in northeast Wisconsin. She said Fincantieri Marinette Marine employs 2,000 people — but its supply chain is even larger.

“It’s not just helping Fincantieri Marinette Marine, but our entire defense supply chain” she said. The shipyard was awarded another naval contract to build frigates earlier this year.

As for this Saturday, “it’s about how hard we have worked as a crew family to get to this point,” said Kissinger.

After its Milwaukee commissioning, the USS Beloit will traverse the St. Lawrence Seaway and head down to its new home port, Naval Station Mayport in Jacksonville, Florida. Kissinger expects its first deployment to come in 2026.

Since Marinette Marine started delivering the ships in 2008, five Freedom-class ships have been decommissioned. One was retired after less than five years of service.

Investigative journalism outlet ProPublica reported that some Freedom-class crews faced mechanical failures and dysfunctional weapons systems.