Austal USA has held a christening ceremony for the company’s first steel ship, future USNS Billy Frank Jr., the Navy’s sixth towing, salvage, and rescue ship (T-ATS 11), at the company’s Mobile, Alabama, ship manufacturing facility.
Ship sponsor Peggen Frank christened the ship on March 29, 2025. The ship’s namesake, Billy Frank, Jr., was a member of the Nisqually Indian Tribe and a Korean War veteran where he served in the US Marine Corps. He was posthumously named a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama in 2015.
T-ATS 11 will provide ocean-going towing, salvage, and rescue capabilities to support fleet operations. The ship is capable of towing US Navy ships and will have 6,000 square feet of deck space for embarked systems.
The large, unobstructed deck allows for the embarkation of a variety of stand-alone and interchangeable systems. The T-ATS platform will combine the capabilities of the retiring rescue and salvage ship (T-ARS 50) and fleet ocean tug (T-ATF 166) platforms, according to Austal.
T-ATS will support current missions, including towing, salvage, rescue, oil spill response, humanitarian assistance, and wide-area search and surveillance.
The platform also enables future rapid capability initiatives such as supporting modular payloads with hotel services and appropriate interfaces.
The future USNS Billy Frank Jr. is one of three T-ATS vessels under construction at Austal USA with two more under contract.