The ship is named for Private First Class Robert Ernest Simanek, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for shielding fellow Marines from a grenade at the Battle of Bunker Hill during the Korean War. The Medal of Honor was presented to him by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in a White House ceremony in 1953.
“From christening in May 2024 to delivery, it has been an exciting time for those who spend each day preparing this ship to support our fleet,” said Tim Roberts, Strategic and Theater Sealift program manager, Program Executive Office (PEO) Ships. “The ESB ship class is a highly flexible platform used across various military operations. ESB ships are mobile sea-based assets and are a part of the critical access infrastructure that supports the deployment of forces, equipment, supplies, and warfighting capability.”
ESBs are optimized to support a variety of maritime based missions, including Special Operations Forces, Airborne Mine Counter Measures, Crisis Response Force Sea Basing, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance and Unmanned Aviation Systems. The ESBs, which include a four spot V-22 sized flight deck, mission deck and hangar, are designed around four core capabilities: aviation facilities, berthing, equipment staging support, and command and control assets.
Follow-on ship, future USS Hector A. Cafferata Jr. (ESB 8) is under construction at NASSCO.
PEO Ships, one of the Department of Defense’s largest acquisition organizations, is responsible for executing the development and procurement of all destroyers, amphibious ships and craft, auxiliary ships, special mission ships, sealift ships and support ships.