Read the story at DMN here. I love their website and if you haven't visited I highly recommend you do so. One other thing. I'm of mixed opinion when it comes to the Pentagon budget woes.
How can you be looking to cut ships, squadrons and battalions, yet you keep legacy requirements when it comes to the number of airplanes, ships, etc that need to be purchased?
The only weapon system that has seen the needed quantities cut is the AAV upgrade.
We're going to have many fewer squadrons in the Marine Corps and Navy, yet the number of F-35's needed remains the same. Ditto with the MV-22, AH-1Z, UH-1Y...even the JLTV.
Yet we're looking at a Marine Corps that AT BEST will be almost 30,000 bodies smaller.
I don't get it.
The requirement goes down, and yet we are still moving toward 11 LPD17 ships target. Is it feasible to replace a portion of aging LSD fleet with LPD? I never fully understood the difference between the two classes, same goes LHA vs LHD.
ReplyDeletewell you hit on my point. i think we should stop right now and move toward an LSD replacement. the difference is the number of landing craft or AAVs that the LSD can carry. once they had the ships paired. you had most of the "maneuver element" on LSTs and LSDs while the aviation was carried on the LHA. when the LHD came it kinda made a one ship MEU possible and quite honestly 11 big deck LHDs are powerful and replace a number of ships, but leadership doesn't want to hear that.
DeleteFor USMC the only thing that ultimately matter is amphibious capability:
Delete- LPD-17 189 x 50 feet of well-deck.
- LSD-41 440 x 50 feet of well-deck.
Which model will be more useful for any amphibious force ?
Old 5-vessel LHA "Tarawa"-class had an 108-feet short, 76 feet wide, odd bi-furcated well-deck, unable to take LCACs.
On same hull LHD-1-8 has 267 x 50 feet well-deck, fit for 3x LCAC.
are you not paying attention? i broke down my line of thinking quite well i think. now you're just being argumentative. why? the LSD will be replaced and with ships that at least equal their capabilities.
Deletebut that isn't your concern. you want to sell a new ship to shore connector. thats not a matter that is in the top 20 of concerns for the Marine Corps to me.
Sol, I was attempting to respond to Adap...and should have put his address on it.
DeleteCould you share any evidence that anything LPD-17-based will actually have a 440+feet long well-deck ? I have never seen 'long well-deck' as any priority in the LSD-41 replacement discussions.
As designed - hence the builder's claim of 'economies' on this extraordinarily expensive and astonishingly 'under-amphibic' vessel - no other 'version' of LPD-17 could casually stretch the well-deck by over 250 additional feet without massive structural redesign, multiplication of plumbing, pumping-capacity, ballast-tank volumes etc.
The four-vessel LSD-49-class showed the obvious that you can shrink a well-deck from 440 feet to 180-feet. But I know of no class where without very expensive structural and systemic changes you'd go the other way.
If cost and USMNC's amphibious future were to matter, the obvious route would be to take the current 2012-state-of-the-art SLEP'd LSD-41 class, if need be 'dress her up' with sloping topsides and superstructure - no dramatics here - and build copies at near 2:1 per cost of anything LPD-17-based, while retaining the full 440-feet of well-deck capacity.
For what that would save, you could have all+ the big-wheel APCs you ask for, etc..
I would propose to focus on the shrinking amphib-capability versus sales-speak by one ship-builder who has already cursed the Corps with a short we'll-deck amphib because they did not believe that heavy armor matters, and that magic helo-advances could ever lift to shore everything a viable GCE needs.
Amphibious core-competency has already been massively messed with by ship-building people who seem to give 'jack' about how you survive in thin-skinned combat-vehicles fit to somehow be 'helo'd' to shore.
Finally, there is nothing 'to sell' - except to raise the opportunity to for the first time since WW-2 offer the Corps a low-cost/low-tech opportunity to boost its tactical amphibious capability. You can dismiss this. But you should not. This proposal is much 'cleaner' than any of the programs you take issue with and the specters that concern you.
And USMC will either take a deep look at this or not.
There is no 'Happy-Talk' in purdy ads by a ship-builder that seems to not care too much how Marines would ever get to shore in any tactically-effective 'wave'.
Sol, so far USMC
- neither got EFV (good thing),
- but got shorty well-deck LPDs (bad thing),
- will see your well-deck capacity shrink further (bad thing),
- will not get a fresh APC - inshore capable or not - any time soon (hohum thing since requirements are at odds with each other),
- found out that MV-22 is great at some stuff and poor at other (more hohum),
- will not get any tactical-lift relief from LCAC-2 with its 10% performance-improvement maximum (poor gains after 30 years of thoughts),
- may never get to a plausible GCE-correct amphibious assault hardware-profile while shore-defenses advance,
- and will thus inevitably find 'Doves' come to ask why and how come and what for... in order to pay for - so the rhetoric will be - in part the care of veterans etc. etc.
Yes, the F-35 is a very serious challenge all around eating into USMC budgets, But losing amphibious capability is institutionally actually much much worse since USN may do what may be deemed good for their budget, and may simply dial-down further actual amphibious capability by following the 'shorty' LPD-17 route as the path of least resistance.
One thing is for sure, no ARG CO will risk his squad and crew to play 'Sitting Duck' for an under-evolved assault-'doctrine' based on (USN-)'Shorties', inadequate (USN-) Connector numbers on hand, inadequate (USN-)Connector heavy-lift capability, and any USMC 'close-enough-to-just-take-the ACV/AAV-7' hopes.
For the amphibious Corps this decline in core-capability is more serious than the F-35B issue.