The global ship management group of Crowley Maritime Corp. recently managed successfully turning over the Military Sealift Command’s T-AGOS/T-AGM fleet, as announced by the company on July 1st via a press statement.
Currently, the company carries out maintenance and command duties regarding 5 ocean-surveillance (T-AGOS) ships. The first one of which is the USNS Able (T-AGOS 20), the second being the USNS Victorious (T-AGOS 19), the third - USNS Loyal (T-AGOS 22), the fourth - USNS Effective (T-AGOS 21) and the fifth one being the USNS Impeccable (T-AGOS 23) along with the USNS Invincible (T-AGM 24) ocean-surveillance vessel.
USNS Loyal
All turnover-related procedures were initiated back in the middle of January, when Crowley appointed a team to travel to Sasebo, Japan for a meeting with Military Sealift Command (MSC) officials along with the incumbent vessel manager in order to discuss management changes.
“We are filled up with excitement having finished these high-profile ships’ official turnover. It would not have been possible to carry out this task without our remarkable government team’s hard work and wholehearted determination, as well as the tremendous support that we were given by MSC,” commented Mike Golonka, Crowley, Vice President, government services.
The T-AGOS/T-AGM fleet offers its full support to the dual-band, phased array and parabolic dish radars of the United States Air Force as well as to the Navy’s own Surveillance Towed Array Sensor Systems operations and to other various missions carried out by the government.
“We represent the U.S. Navy Military Sealift Command in order to provide support to our national defense. The program at hand is quite critical and we are going to handle this contract in the strictest manner possible, as it is our privilege to be able to serve our country,” said Rob Petrosino, Crowley’s T-AGOS/T-AGM engineering manager.
The vessels feature electronic equipment for the processing and transmission of data through satellite to shore stations in order for the information to be evaluated. Victorious is constructed on a rather small waterplane, twin-hull, or SWATH, design for achieving a greater amount of stability in cases of slow speed levels in high latitudes while having to cope with harsh weather conditions. Impeccable’s hull uses as basis Victorious’ design, but offers a propulsion plant with more power and is intended particularly for the deployment of an additional active towed-array system unit.