The defense secretary went into the hospital on Jan. 1, the Pentagon announced.
The command and control and 30 mm-equipped versions will be ready for unit testing in 2024.
Another littoral regiment is planned for Guam in 2025.
The landing ship medium will be the Corps' first modern stern landing vessel.
U.S. Navy helicopters returned fire, sinking three of the four boats and killing the crews.
Gregory Edward McLean previously served as the executive officer of the littoral combat ship Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Littoral combat ships are expected to serve 25 years. But the Little Rock and the Detroit were less than a decade old.
Decommissioning these ships early amounts to a loss of almost $7 billion based on analysis by Defense News.
Research teams are experimenting with robot “dogs” — testing their ability to maneuver around Navy ships and take on mundane maintenance tasks.
By Hope Hodge Seck
The ship, which was designed to serve for 25 years, is one of the Freedom-class variants that the Navy is mothballing early.
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