Nobody can define what the proposed light amphibious warship (LAW) for the Marines will look like.
The idea behind the ship is to take a commercial design or adapt a historic design to make a vessel capable of accommodating up to 40 sailors and at least 75 Marines to transport Marine kit over a range of about 3,500 nautical miles, according to a recent industry day presentation.
While the presentation noted that the ship should have few tailored Navy requirements, that also creates a problem: If the Navy is going to pay tens of millions to develop, build, crew and operate them, should it not provide some additional value to the fleet?
The Marines are organizing a new type of Marine unit--the Littoral Regiment--that would need these smaller transports:
The Marine Corps is moving quickly to develop a new kind of infantry unit to challenge Chinese claims on small islands in the Pacific, while the Navy is developing new and smaller ships to move and supply them once they deploy.
The new Littoral Regiments won’t be fully fleshed out for several years, but Marine Corps leaders said today they will be bolstered by logistics and air defense battalions once they’re ready to go.
The Marines want two in Japan (Okinawa, I assume) and one on Guam.
As I wrote recently, the Marine idea for the LAW seems like it subtracts value from the fleet by requiring a Navy warship escort:
The Marines are supposed to disperse across islands and coastal areas to detect and sink Chinese warships. Yet the Navy will need to detach warships to escort these small amphibs?
That makes no sense. The ships could be quite inexpensive yet require the escort of expensive warships? How is that saving money or promoting the mission?
My vision in Proceedings (membership required) was for smaller ships with some limited offensive and defensive capabilities to deploy company-sized Marine units. I wanted to experiment with replicating the old converted destroyer escorts used in World War II in large numbers by converting retired Oliver Hazard Perry-class frigates.The link works now actually. I had hoped that retired Perry frigate hulls could be converted to test the concept. But I think they are gone now, as I noted in this post.
Somebody needs to define what this ship will be.
