Navy Secretary Ray Mabus believes that the service’s plans to deploy four afloat staging bases along with small high speed vessels for quickly ferrying troops and supplies will have a significant impact on the way the Navy conducts future operations.
“Those ships (the Afloat Forward Staging Bases) and the Joint High Speed Vessels … are helping with modularity in the fleet,” Mabus said at the American Society of Naval Engineers conference outside Washington on Friday.
“But it’s also helping change the way we operate, change what we can do, allow us to be a lot more creative, allow us to come up with some new and innovative con-ops in the future,” he said.
The Navy plans to build up to four of the Montford Point-class staging bases to launch aircraft and small boats and special operations forces. Two are planned as Mobile Landing Platforms, or MLPs, with the latter two slated to become known as Afloat Forward Stages Bases, or AFSBs.
The ships are also meant to decrease the Navy reliance on foreign ports.
They are being built by General Dynamics [GD] National Steel and Shipbuilding Co. (NASSCO) in San Diego. The JHSVs are built by Austal USA in Mobile, Ala.
The first MLP completed sea trials and delivered to the Navy last year, and is expected to become operational in fiscal 2015. The Navy has also been accepting delivery of the JHSVs and plans to field 10 of the vessels.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert has said he is hopeful that Navy and Marine Corps will be able to operate F-35B fighters and V-22 tilt rotor aircraft off the afloat staging ships in addition to aircraft carriers and amphibious ships.