USNS Sumner
1994 Pathfinder-class survey ship
USNS Sumner (T-AGS-61) is a Pathfinder-class oceanographic survey ship that became operational in 1997. It is the fourth United States Navy ship named Sumner, in this case for Thomas Hubbard Sumner, an American sea captain who discovered the principles of celestial navigation by circle of equal altitude. These ships are crewed by a small crew of civilian mariners, supporting an even smaller contingent of United States Navy personnel.
According to Carol Rosenberg, writing in the Miami Herald, the vessel was scheduled to be placed out of service in 2014. Rosenberg reported speculation that Summer would be transferred to the United States Coast Guard. The Coast Guard would use the ship to counter smugglers in the Caribbean Sea, where she would be stationed as a permanent helicopter station. Coast Guard sharpshooters could be quickly dispatched to intercept and apprehend smugglers. Retrofitting the ship with facilities to operate and maintain a helicopter would cost $10 million.
According to the Naval Vessel Registry, Sumner was stricken on 29 August 2014 with a disposition of Transfer. MARAD NDRF document lists her at the Beaumont Reserve Fleet, Beaumont, Texas in December 2014, with note scheduled for disposal.
The public source identifies “USNS Sumner” as 1994 Pathfinder-class survey ship. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around USNS, Sumner and Pathfinder-class.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7866740. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1997 and 2014.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “USNS Sumner” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.