The fast combat support ship (US Navy hull classification symbol: AOE) is the United States Navy's largest combat logistics ship, designed as an oiler, ammunition and supply ship. All fast combat support ships currently in service are operated by Military Sealift Command. The AOE has the speed to keep up with carrier battle groups and the capacity to fully support their needs. It receives petroleum products, ammunition and stores from various shuttle ships and redistributes these items when needed to ships in the carrier battle group . This greatly reduces the number of service ships needed to travel with carrier battle groups.
The four ships of the Sacramento class were 53,000 tons at full load, 796 feet overall length, and carried two Boeing Vertol CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters. The Sacramento class was retired in 2005.
The Supply class ships displace 48,800 tons full load and operate two Sikorsky MH-60S Knighthawk helicopters.
Famous quotes containing the words fast, combat, support and/or ship:
“Who comes so fast in silence of the night?”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“In case I conk out, this is provisionally what I have to do: I must clarify obscurities; I must make clearer definite ideas or dissociations. I must find a verbal formula to combat the rise of brutality—the principle of order versus the split atom.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“Every winter the liquid and trembling surface of the pond, which was so sensitive to every breath, and reflected every light and shadow, becomes solid to the depth of a foot or a foot and a half, so that it will support the heaviest teams, and perchance the snow covers it to an equal depth, and it is not to be distinguished from any level field. Like the marmots in the surrounding hills, it closes its eyelids and becomes dormant for three months or more.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We were all on this ship in the sixties, our generation, a ship going to discover the New World. And the Beatles were in the crow’s nest of that ship.”
—John Lennon (1940–1980)