The US Navy and Austal USA held a keel laying ceremony for the future USS Gabrielle Giffords, the Navy's tenth littoral combat ship (LCS), on April 16 in Mobile, Ala. The keel-laying ceremony recognizes the first joining together of a ship's components. While modern shipbuilding processes allow fabrication of individual modules to begin months earlier, the laying of the keel represents the formal beginning of a ship.
