USS Gabrielle Giffords (LCS-10)

Gabrielle Giffords (LCS-10) will be an Independence-class littoral combat ship of the United States Navy. The ship is named after former United States Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot along with eighteen other people during the 2011 shooting in Tucson, Arizona. The ship's name was announced by Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus on 10February 2012. The ship's sponsor will be Roxanna Green, the mother of Christina-Taylor Green, 9, who was killed in the Tucson shooting that wounded Giffords in January 2011.

Gabrielle Giffords will be the 15th U.S. naval ship to be named for a woman by the United States Navy.

The ship, currently being built by Austal USA, is scheduled to be completed and delivered to the Navy in August of 2015.

Naming Controversy
Some commentators disputed the decision to name the ship after Giffords, with two retired U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps officers criticizing the trend of naming ships for political reasons while military blogger Spencer Ackerman called it "The USS Shameless Cynicism." In response, some commentators have noted that several ships in the US Navy, including USS Henry M. Jackson (SSBN-730), USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70), USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74), USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76), and USS George Bush (CVN-77) were named for prominent politicians who were still alive at the time of the naming, and that the still-active Carl Vinson was named for a Congressman responsible for barring women from combat roles in the Navy for nearly 50 years.