The most survivable American warship ever built, some main information.

The most survivable American warship ever built, some main information.

The U.S. Navy is the most accomplished provider of sea power in history. In a world where the vast preponderance of people and commerce are found within a hundred miles of the sea, it has the capacity to control sea lanes, provide secure sea bases, and project power ashore almost anywhere that the need arises. American sea power is best known for its signature warships—submarines, surface combatants and especially aircraft carriers. Those are the vessels that dominate discussion of sea power in the popular media. But there is more to the modern Navy than these three classic expressions of maritime power. In fact, the most versatile vessel in the current fleet is a type of ship most people probably haven’t even heard of. It is called an amphibious transport dock or “landing platform, dock,” and is referred to in Navy jargon as an LPD. LPDs are designed to transport Marines engaged in expeditionary warfare. Their vast decks and interior spaces can accommodate up to 800 Marines plus all the equipment they need to go ashore—rotorcraft, ship-to-shore connectors, and amphibious armored vehicles. They also carry a Navy crew of nearly 400 sailors. The Navy has been building San Antonio-class LPDs since the new millennium began in 2000, and they now look destined to comprise two-thirds of the amphibious warfare fleet which will carry the Marines to mid-century. Also known as LPD 17 after the lead ship in the class, the vessels can function as part of a three-ship amphibious ready group, or as part of a larger joint task force. But they also can operate independently, and therein lies part of the explanation for what makes the LPD so versatile. Most of the Navy’s warships are designed to accomplish a handful of high-priority missions. For instance, surface combatants like the DDG-51 destroyer exist mainly to provide air and missile defense for the fleet and assets ashore. They are so optimized for this function that many of them don’t even have anti-ship capabilities for combating the hostile warships of other navies. LPD 17 is different. It was conceived to support Marine Corps air-ground task forces in a wide array of circumstances ranging from peacekeeping to all-out East-West war. So its design is flexible, agile and multi-mission. This has proven a valuable asset in the current global landscape, because threats have become harder to anticipate, and LPD 17 can be quickly plugged into almost any contingency that arises. In that sense LPD 17 is a lot like the Marine Corps itself, and it is no secret that the Marines played a central role in assuring the vessels would be more reliable, survivable, habitable and useful than any “amphib” that came before. Although they are barely half the size of the amphibious assault vessels that are the centerpiece of ready groups—ships designed primarily to serve as sea bases for F-35B fighters and rotorcraft—the LPDs are remarkably diverse in their capabilities. How diverse? Among other things, they can serve as sea bases for expeditionary forces, mobile airports for rotorcraft, command centers, hospitals, repair centers and floating logistical hubs for warehousing supplies. Because they are so flexible, they have become what the military refers to as a “force multiplier”—they can go pretty much anywhere, and do pretty much anything. Nobody would say that about a destroyer or a submarine. In recent years the LPD 17 class has been used for a wide array of unusual missions, including special operations, intelligence gathering, counter-piracy operations, airborne mine countermeasures, maritime interdiction, and medical treatment of casualties. Because they have so much space, they have also been proposed for other missions not included in their original design concept such as missile defense of the homeland. The Navy decided last year to construct a second “flight” of LPDs that could replace a dozen aging vessels in the amphibious fleet. What that means is that eventually two-thirds of all U.S. amphibious warships will be LPDs, assuming the Marines get their required fleet of 38 vessels. At the moment they are six vessels short, which is one reason why LPDs have sometimes needed to function separately from ready groups when forward deployed. There aren’t enough amphibs to conduct every pressing mission with a three-ship ready group. But this practice has served to highlight the value of LPDs as a force multiplier, especially when teamed with transformational rotorcraft like the MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor. Osprey combines the vertical agility of a helicopter with the speed and range of a fixed-wing aircraft, so a single LPD can influence events over a vast area despite the occasional absence of amphibious assault ships with their bigger complements of combat aircraft. The sole builder of LPDs is Huntington Ingalls Industries, a contributor that assembles all of the Navy’s amphibious warships at its sprawling shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi. Much of the on-board defensive equipment such as the ship’s radar is provided by Raytheon (another contributor), the world’s largest supplier of military electronics. Huntington Ingalls has adapted modular manufacturing techniques to reduce the time and expense of construction, and now seems to have the shipbuilding process down to a science—which is why building a second flight of LPDs was much less expensive than developing a new class of ship. The San Antonio-class design anticipated a number of threat trends now confronting the Navy and Marine Corps, such as the proliferation of anti-ship missiles around the world. That is why its communication masts are enclosed in composite structures that allow transmission on key frequencies while defeating radar detection at other frequencies. The entire vessel is hardened against shock and designed to cope with emergent threats that did not pose a danger in the past. So LPD 17 is one of the most survivable amphibious warships ever built. But the reason why it needs to be highly survivable is because it is also so versatile, which means using it frequently in circumstances where hostile forces might be encountered. Having a flexible force multiplier of this kind is crucial as the spectrum of conflict becomes over-populated with dangers that weren’t imagined a generation ago. Congress signaled last year that it wanted to see construction of a second flight of LPDs accelerated, which suggests the Navy’s most versatile surface vessel is likely to remain in production for many years to come. #Gm* (Source_Forbes)