“I can only guess that it’s a test ship to see how it performs. They are finished testing it, so they are now decommissioning it. They should give it to the Coast Guard, so it is designed for to patrol the US coast.”
your guess is wrong ... if you had read the article you’d know they’re decommissioning nine of them ... furthermore, this whole class has been a boondoogle and disaster from day one ... the two-engine transmissions are faulty and apparently unfixable ... these boats basically don’t work, and the cost to TRY to operate them is astronomical, which is why the navy is dumping them and also why no other service is ever going to want to try to operate them ...
Plus the weapon system it was designed to utilize against coastal submarine intrusions is crapped out so it is without a mission.