(Radio Iowa) – Iowa Senator Joni Ernst says it is just a matter of time before the U-S-S Sioux City and the other littoral combat ships in its class are decommissioned. Ernst, a Republican from Red Oak, serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee and says the Navy will mothball the ships.

“The Navy knew this was going to happen. The Navy did not want the littoral combat ship they did not want to build them yet they went ahead they didn’t have a need for them,” Ernst says. The littoral combat ships were supposed to be smaller and faster and serve as anti-submarine and mine ships. But they proved to have several issues and were expensive to maintain. Senator Ernst is not happy the Navy allowed the people of Sioux City to spend thousands of dollars to help fund the commissioning of their namesake ship.

“They put the community of cities through this. Gosh, the citizens there the donors, everybody put all of this money up and the pride and heritage that goes with the city of Sioux City,” she says. “And we dedicated all of that towards the ship and then Navy knew full well that they would not be able to use the ship in the future.” The U-S-S Sioux City was commissioned at Annapolis, Maryland on November 17th of 2018. Ernst says a lot of money has been wasted on these ships.

USS Sioux City (US Navy photo)

“Because how many billions of dollars taxpayer spent on the actual ships, the millions and millions of dollars that were raised to commission the respective cities?,” Ernst says. “It seemed like a big fraud scheme to me. I am so upset about it and the good people that were just taken in by this.”

There was some discussion the Department of Homeland Security might want the ships for drug interdiction missions, but Ernst says nobody wants them. “The best we can hope, and believe me you know we have been wrangling all these different lines of effort who could use these ships?,” she says. “In all honesty we’re not seeing any takers out there because of the problems with the ships.”

Ernst says the ships cost 50 million dollars a year to maintain, and some of the 13 ships in the class have develop cracks in their hulls. The Senator says the Navy has not set an official date to decommission the Sioux City yet. She says it could be a couple of weeks all the way to a couple of years before that happens.