Marines want to go back to traditional amphibs - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Marines want to go back to traditional amphibs

More than two years before the amphibious assault ship America enters the fleet, Marine officials have already drawn up early plans for a version of the ship that includes a major component America is missing — a well deck.

The “LHA 8 concept,” as it was called in a presentation Monday by Marine Corps Combat Development Command, would combine new aviation features the Marines want in the America class with a traditional big-deck capacity for landing craft and green gear.

Although the Navy’s most recent shipbuilding program includes no plans for such a ship, the notional drawings for a hybrid LHA 8 — America is LHA 6 — show that elements within the Corps are eager to get back to traditional amphibs as soon as possible. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus has said it would be prohibitively expensive to alter the designs for America or the follow-on LHA 7, so they’ll be built as planned.

America and the unnamed LHA 7 were designed without well decks to create a “Marine Corps aircraft carrier” built around the F-35B Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter variant and big rotary-wing aircraft such as the MV-22 Osprey and the future CH-53K Super Stallion.

The future of the ships formerly known as LHA(R) was never stable; advocates pushed for them to be warships, Military Sealift Command auxiliaries or a combination of both. As it happened, Navy officials decided the first two Americas would have gray hulls, but planners inside the Marine Corps came to quietly regret that the next big-deck amphibs won’t be able to send gear and troops ashore in traditional landing craft.

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