The Asheville-class gunboats were a class of small warships built for the United States Navy in response to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

All Asheville-class gunboats have since been donated to museums, scheduled for scrapping, or transferred to the Greek, Turkish, Colombian and South Korean Navies.

They proved successful in coastal work, intercepting small boats attempting to transport arms along the Vietnam coast.

Attempts to use them on the inland rivers proved disastrous to the small lightly armored ships, USS Canon was severely damaged by over eight rocket strikes, resulting in half of the crew being wounded.

Benicia conducted test firings in the spring of 1971 of a modified AGM-12 Bullpup surface-to-surface missile system and Antelope and Ready were fitted with two launch cells aft plus reload boxes on deck.