Pentagon announced on 6 August the ceremony, which will be held the day after. She will be the third commissioned ship in naval service named after Nantucket. Marinette Marine was awarded the contract to build the ship on 6 October 2017.

The LCS class consists of two variants, the Freedom-variant and the Independence-variant, designed and built by two industry teams. Lockheed Martin leads the Freedom-variant team in Marinette, Wisconsin (for the odd-numbered hulls). The Independence-variant team is led by Austal USA in Mobile, Alabama, (for LCS 6 and the subsequent even-numbered hulls).

The first Nantucket, a Passaic class coastal monitor, was commissioned on 26 February 1863. Assigned to the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron, Nantucket participated in the attack on Confederate forts in Charleston Harbor on 7 April 1863. Struck 51 times during the valiant yet unsuccessful assault on the vital Southern port, the single-turreted monitor was repaired at Port Royal and returned to Charleston to support Army operations on Morris Island. The second Nantucket, a wooden lightship built in 1907 for the Lighthouse Service, was transferred to the Navy by executive order on 11 April 1917. During World War I, the ship continued its duties of warning vessels away from Nantucket Shoals and aided in guarding nearby waters against U-boats.