Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 7, 1993 TAG: 9311070066
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS LENGTH: Medium
"With this ceremony, the USS Hampton and crew will join the fleet to serve our nation in company with 54 other submarines of her class and thousands of other dedicated men and women," said Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., the ceremony's principal speaker.
Thurmond, the ranking GOP member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the threats facing the United States in the post-Cold War era will be more challenging than those when the Soviet Union was a rival Superpower.
"These new threats are more treacherous and might come at us from every corner of the globe," he said, mentioning Iran and its new submarines, North Korea's efforts to develop nuclear weapons and China's growing naval power.
Although the U.S. Navy is down to 426 ships from a late-1980s peak of 536, it is still busy worldwide, with blockades of Bosnia and Haiti and support missions off Somalia and in the Persian Gulf, Thurmond said.
Yet some people keep insisting that defense spending must be reduced further, he said.
"We have to put the brakes on the decline of our military," the senator said. "History has shown that our nation is served best by maintaining a strong defense."
Representatives of all four Hamptons that the new submarine was named for - in South Carolina, New Hampshire, Iowa and Virginia - were on hand for the commissioning.
Virginia's Hampton, virtually next door to the Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Co. where the Los Angeles-class attack submarine was built, is the largest of the four Hamptons, with almost 134,000 residents.
The other three Hamptons combined, including the South Carolina locality's neighboring Hampton County, have fewer than 40,000 residents.
The new submarine is the fourth Navy vessel to carry the Hampton name. That doesn't include a Confederate steamer, the CSS Hampton, that was burned by rebel troops in 1865 to keep it out of Union hands.
by CNB