USS Ponce (LPD-15)

USS Ponce (AFSB-15)

In 2013, after AFSB conversion
History
United States
Name:	Ponce
Namesake:	Ponce, Puerto Rico
Ordered:	17 May 1965
Builder:	Lockheed Shipbuilding
Laid down:	31 October 1966
Launched:	20 May 1970
Commissioned:	10 July 1971
Homeport:	Norfolk, Virginia
Status:	in active service, as of 2016
Badge:
General characteristics
Class and type:	Austin-class amphibious transport dock
Displacement:	8883 tons light, 16591 tons full, 7708 tons dead
Length:	173.7 m (570 ft) overall 167 m (548 ft) waterline
Beam:	30.4 m (100 ft) extreme 25.6 m (84 ft) waterline
Draft:	6.7 m (22 ft) maximum 7 m (23 ft) limit
Speed:	20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph)
Complement:	29 officers, 487 men
Armament:	8 × .50 caliber gun mounts 2 × 20 mm Phalanx CIWS 2 × 25 mm Mk 38 Mod 2 Laser Weapon System

USS Ponce (AFSB(I)-15) (/ˈpɒnseɪ/ PON-say), (formerly LPD-15), is an Austin-class amphibious transport dock of the United States Navy. Commissioned in 1971, she spent most of her career based on the East Coast and operating in the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea, serving in Operation Desert Shield and supporting US operations in the 2011 Libyan Civil War. It was intended that the ship would be decommissioned in 2012, but she gained a reprieve to be converted at short notice into a testbed for the Afloat Forward Staging Base concept, in which she would act as a base for mine-sweeping MH-53E Sea Dragon helicopters in the Persian Gulf. Since the conversion, Ponce has been used to test other ideas and technologies, such as the Laser Weapon System and operating United States Army attack helicopters at sea.

Ponce is the only ship of the United States Navy that is named for Ponce in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, which in turn was named after the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León, the first governor of Puerto Rico and the European discoverer of Florida.