The Marine Corps is optimistic it will get the remaining funding it needs for its LPD-28 amphibious transport dock, which will keep the same hull design as the earlier ships in the class but may be outfitted with some different systems as the sea services transition from the LPD class to the LX(R).
The Navy and Marine Corps decided last year to replace the LSD dock landing ships with a scaled-down version of the LPD-17 class–the Marine Corps loved the LPD ship class, but it was much more capable than the LSD it replaces and cost more than the Navy had budgeted for.
“I think that was really unbelievably smart, we’re so happy that’s going to happen,” Maj. Gen. Andrew O’Donnell, deputy commanding general of Marine Corps Combat Development Command, said Tuesday morning at the second annual Amphibious Warship Industrial Base Coalition forum on Capitol Hill. “It will be an extra ship, it will be out there getting us back up to 33 [ships] where we need to be,” he said, but more importantly, “it’s perhaps the loggerhead of the bridge to what we see as LX(R), the LPD-17 hull form onboard an LSD-type mission ship.”
As the Navy and Marine Corps team continue to refine the LX(R) requirements, seeking that right balance between cost and capability, O’Donnell said that the LPD-28 ship–which the Navy did not ask for but Congress has repeatedly prodded it to buy–may be the first to transition to new ship systems.
“It’ll be a way for us to keep the [production] line going as the bridge, but also they’ll probably be looking at some of the things that maybe they want to do in the LX(R) and they may look at maybe putting them into the LPD,” he added. The LPD ship design has much more command and control capability than the old LSDs, as well as advanced medical capability, a bigger flight deck and flight operations center, and more overall space to grow into. The Navy needs to cut cost to make this option affordable as an LSD replacement, but the Marines admit they’re excited about getting a substantial capability upgrade in the fleet.
Col. William Dunn, who recently returned from a deployment as commanding officer of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit, said that forces are being stretched thin during deployments, with the three-ship amphibious ready groups often being split. The new LX(R) will ensure that each ship can meet its mission in dangerous environments, he said.
“These are no-fail missions,” he said of his taskings during a very volatile time in the Middle East. “My direction was, if you have to [evacuate] the Sana’a embassy or the Libyan embassy, no loss of life. That was our task. So we had to find a way to apportion command and control assets throughout two [combatant commands]” with his ships and their Marines split between the Mediterranean and throughout U.S. Central Command. Having additional command and control capabilities on the LX(R) would better position it to meet its missions in life-or-death situations.
LPD-28, and therefore the ability to transition from the current LPD shipbuilding program to the desired LX(R) program, is not fully funded yet. Last year, Congress gave the Navy $1 billion to add to accumulating prior-year funds, as well as incremental funding authority to buy the ship over several years. Speakers at the industrial base coalition event acknowledged the challenge in securing that money and that they needed a bit more still, but they were all confident Congress would rally again to support the amphibious forces.
Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.), chairman of the House Armed Services readiness subcommittee, said it was “a difficult task to say the least” to secure the funding last year, “but we placed the marker out there to indicate that Congress is serious about making sure that we have an amphibious fleet that can meet that need.”
“I believe the LPD is a great hull form–LPD-17 is tried and true,” he continued. “LPD-28’s going to be a great ship, it’s going to be a great segue to what I believe an LX(R) should be, and that’s a ship with a tremendous amount of capability that can go do different things and has a tremendous ability to make this nation’s needs.” He praised the plan to use LPD-28 as “a learning curve to determine how we will build the next generation amphibious ship, build it well, build it as efficiently as we can, build it to a requirement.”
O’Donnell said he was confident that lawmakers would come through one more time to give the last bit of needed funding, especially after hearing such strong support from Wittman, Senate Armed Services Seapower Subcommittee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss), and House Appropriations defense subcommittee member Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio).
“We’ll get it there,” he said. “I think everybody is pretty confident, we feel pretty good about it after listening to the members talk. I think we’re going to get there.”