Huntington Ingalls say they have launched amphibious transport dock ‘Fort Lauderdale’ for the US Navy.
“The successful launch of Fort Lauderdale, our 12th LPD, is a major milestone achievement for our shipbuilders,” Ingalls Shipbuilding President Brian Cuccias said.
“Thank you to our shipbuilders for all the hard work they do every day.”
Fort Lauderdale was translated via Ingalls’ rail car system to the floating dry dock prior to launch, say the firm. The dock was moved away from the pier and then flooded to float the ship. With the assistance of tugs, Fort Lauderdale came off the dock Saturday morning.
According to the US Navy:
“The San Antonio class is the latest addition to the Navy’s 21st century amphibious assault force. The 684-foot-long, 105-foot-wide ships are used to embark and land Marines, their equipment and supplies ashore via air cushion or conventional landing craft and amphibious assault vehicles, augmented by helicopters or vertical takeoff and landing aircraft such as the MV-22 Osprey.
The ships support a Marine Air Ground Task Force across the spectrum of operations, conducting amphibious and expeditionary missions of sea control and power projection to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions throughout the first half of the 21st century.”
This is the 12th of 13. Very interesting to compare to China’s type 071 program, currently building the 6th of 8.
The Flight IIs are upcoming and will replace the Whidbey Island class LSDs. Probably another 8-10 hulls. The USN is starting to move away from these large units and towards smaller hulls though, so it remains to be seen if they will build all of them.
Cheers
It looks like this vessel has a different mast design to previous ships of the San Antonio class. Any idea why this is?
As far as I know it is a cost cutting measure, these ships lack some high end features and are supposed to replace the Whidbey Island Class LSDs.
Just did a bit of reading and I got that slightly wrong, the last two of this class are “transitional” ships into the future more basic LX(R), the LX(R) being the replacement for the Whidbey Island Class. So Fort Lauderdale is supposed to incorporate some of the same cost reduction features.
Aha, thanks for the info, Evan. I was wondering why the USN had decided to switch from the octagonal mast, with its low radar cross section, to a more traditional design.
A full load ship at 25,000 tons ship cost 1,42 billion GBP pounds in 2016 or 1,56 billion pounds in 2019. Does the UK’s shipbuilding look expensive? WE are pretty good against USA, Canada, Australia, France (easy), Italy (easy), Germany (easy), Denmark (easy), Netherlands (easy), Spain, Japan (yes) and also South Korea (protected by subsidies no matter what is said!)! Stay safe and be safe. We are comaptitive and need this more so after this virus!
Competitive.
I’ll try again. 1.42 billion pounds in 2016 which is 1.56 billion pounds in 2019. For a twenty five thousand ton full loaded ship displacement. Phone the UK to have your ships built! But usa will not because the taxclawback does not make any sense to build abroad! Get It !