NASSCO to build fourth Navy ship

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/jun/09/NASSCO-MLP-four/?st



NASSCO to build fourth Navy ship
By Gary Robbins
6:19 p.m.June 9, 2014

General Dynamics-NASSCO will receive up to $64 million to acquire materials to build a fourth Mobile Landing Platform (MLP) ship, a new type of Navy vessel that is designed to serve as an offshore staging platform for amphibious forces. The money will come from the Defense Department, which previously awarded the company at least $1.4 billion for the first three MLP ships, all of which have been developed at NASSCO's shipyard in Barrio Logan.

NASSCO has built and launched the first two MLPs, Montford Point and John Glenn. Construction is underway on the Lewis B. Puller, which is scheduled to be delivered in the second quarter of 2015. The 837-foot ship will expand the Navy's airborne mine countermeasure abilities, in addition to handling troops, equipment and vehicles. The fourth ship is likely to have the same features.

NASSCO has long built large auxiliary ships for the Navy, including 14 dry cargo vessels that the yard constructed earlier this decade, earning a solid reputation in the process. Last year, the General Accountability Office released a review of Navy shipbuilding that singled out the company for praise, saying, "Our analysis of the available data found that recently delivered (Lewis and Clark-class cargo ships) had noticeably fewer open deficiencies at delivery compared to other ship classes. Unlike other classes in our review, the Navy was responsible for the majority of these deficiencies."

The company is currently competing for a multi-billion contract to build 17 next generation oiler ships for the Navy.

--

Read all about the MLP --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Landing_Platform

What I found interesting at this wikipedia entry:

Design

The Mobile Landing Platform concept calls for a large auxiliary support ship to facilitate the 'seabasing' of an amphibious landing force by acting as a floating base or transfer station that can be prepositioned off the target area.[1][2] Troops, equipment, and cargo would be transferred to the MLP by large-draft ships, from where it can be moved ashore by shallower-draft vessels, landing craft like the Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC), or helicopters.[1][2] In order to transfer vehicles from the larger ships to the MLP, the vessels were originally to be fitted with a Vehicle Transfer System; a ramp connecting the two ships alongside, and able to compensate for the movements of both vessels while underway.[3]

A preliminary design by General Dynamics envisioned a ship that carried six LCACs, with the ability to turn around (dock, unload or load, then launch) two landing craft simultaneously.[3] The MLPs were to host a brigade-size force, sail at 20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph), and have a maximum range of 9,000 nautical miles (17,000 km; 10,000 mi).[3] Each ship was to cost US$1.5 billion to build.[3] However, cutbacks to defense spending planned for the fiscal year 2011 budget forced the downscaling of the design in mid-2009.[3]

General Dynamics identified the civilian Alaska-class oil tanker (built by the subsidiary National Steel and Shipbuilding Company) as a suitable basis for an "MLP 'Lite'", with the design modified into a float-on/float-off vessel that could be built for US$500 million per ship.[3] As part of the cost trade-off, the Vehicle Transfer System was scrapped in favor of skin-to-skin mooring of a host ship alongside the MLP, and the LCAC complement was reduced to three.[3] The new design is 837 feet (255 m) long, with a beam of 164 feet (50 m), a top speed of 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph), and a maximum range of 9,500 nautical miles (17,600 km; 10,900 mi).[3] Converteam supply an integrated power system and vessel automation system for the MLP.[4]