Upgrades to keep craft in use for a decade - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Upgrades to keep craft in use for a decade

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — A half-dozen sailors hover around their air-cushioned landing craft, readying to launch it from the nearby beach on their next mission.

At a far end of Assault Craft Unit 5’s oceanfront compound, hard-hatted metalworkers and other civilian contractors work around LCAC 30, propped up in the large white shelter and stripped nearly bare of its propulsion, navigation, communications and payload systems.

Nearby, LCAC 56, already down to its aluminum hull, is just beginning what will take 12 to 14 months to upgrade as part of a Navy-wide service-life extension program.

LCAC 30 is expected to be operational by September, under a larger program to keep the Navy’s fleet of 80 landing craft in service until a new generation of hovercraft enters the fleet, possibly later this decade.

Officials are counting on the SLEP to buy at least 10 more years, and maybe longer, beyond the landing crafts’ initial 20-year service life. The first LCACs entered the fleet in 1987, and the 91st and final craft was delivered in 2001. The Navy, which began the SLEP in 2002, plans to extend 73 LCACs, or most of the existing fleet.

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