New Navy Amphib Tests Changing Strategy

By Kris Osborn

As a new Amphibious Transport Dock completes Builders Trials and moves closer to operational service in 2018, the Navy and Marine Corps continue to adapt planning, technological focus and concepts of operation for amphibious combat and Amphibious Ready Groups in the future.

The USS Portland (LPD 27) has completed a series of at-sea tests including full power runs, self-defense detect-to-engage exercises, evaluations of key combat and communications systems, rapid ballast/de-ballast operations, steering checks, and anchor handling demonstrations.

The USS Portland is part of a broader Navy and Marine Corps strategy to adjusts amphibs for the future. The Navy is building a new, multi-mission amphibious assault ship designed to function in a modern threat environment, conduct a wider range of missions than the ship it is replacing, and help the service increase the lagging number of amphibs in the force, senior officials said.

While LPD 27 is the eleventh LPD 17 San Antonio Amphibious Transport Dock to join the fleet, the service seeks to multiply capability by engineering a new ship called the LX(R) – loosely based on an LPD 17 hull – with expanded technologies.

The Navy plans to build at least 11 new LX(R) ships, with the first one slated to deliver by 2026, service developers said.

In September of last year, Huntington Ingalls Industries secured a $19.1 million contract modification to accelerate design work on the US Navy‘s LX(R) amphibious ship replacement program.

The Navy hopes to add much greater numbers of amphibious assault ships to the fleet while simultaneously adjusting to a modern threat landscape which will require more dis-aggregated operations – and require single Amphibious Ready Groups (ARG) to perform a much wider range of missions. Modern near peer adversaries increasingly posses long range sensors and precision-guided munitions, a phenomenon which will require much more operational diversity from ARGs.