China has Launched its First Type 075 Amphibious Helicopter Carrier

China’s first amphibious assault ship, a Landing Helicopter Dock known as Type 075, was launched in Shanghai on Thursday.

The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN or Chinese Navy), the customer of the vessel, said in a statement that after a brief ceremony starting at 9:20 am at a CSSC’s Hudong-Zhonghua shipyard, waters began to be pumped into a dry dock in which the ship’s hull was built.

Participants at the ceremony – officials from the central and Shanghai governments, officers from the Central Military Commission’s Equipment Development Department and the PLA Navy, executives of the State-owned conglomerate China State Shipbuilding Corp as well as the vessel’s designers and construction workers – applauded as they watched the launch process, the statement said, without providing more details about the event.

According to the PLAN, the new class of ship was domestically developed and constructed. It will have a strong capability to carry out amphibious combat and other tasks.

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As for its specifications, rumors speak of “36,000 tons of displacement”, “capacity of 28 helicopters”, “diesel engine with the 9,000 kW 16PC2-6B” and “four CIWS including two HQ-10 and two H/PJ-11”.

While the Type 075 appears to slightly smaller than the U.S. Navy’s LHA, it is larger compared to French or Spanish/Australian LHD equivalents. It is actually pretty close in size to Italy’s future Trieste LHD.

The first Type 075 was constructed in record time (this has become the norm nowadays, for Chinese shipbuilding: extremely fast construction pace that no one can match). A second vessel of the class is already under construction while a larger version is rumored to be planned.

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The Arms Race in Asia: Japan and Australia Beefing up Amphibious Forces to Counter China

America’s most powerful allies in the Pacific, Australia and Japan, are building up their amphibious forces, buying amphibious vehicles, V-22 aircraft and big new warships. While far smaller than the Marine Corps, the Australian and Japanese units could assist America in stabilizing the region and deterring China — if they can overcome their self-imposed limitations. Japan is preparing for high-end warfare against China, but only in its backyard; Australia is ready to operate more broadly, but not at the high end.

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British Queen Elizabeth Class Carriers can Host Almost 1,000 Royal Marines

BRITAIN’S new aircraft carriers will house more amphibious assault forces than ever before, a minister has said.

HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, both to be based in Portsmouth, will take over the role of deploying amphibious forces to war zones when HMS Ocean is decommissioned in 2018.

Defence procurement minister Philip Dunne said each ship would house a force of 900 marines and aviation personnel – 210 more than Ocean – on top of their ship’s company.

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The Changes Coming to the US Marine/US Navy Amphibious Fleet

The Navy and Marine Corps amphibious fleet is on the cusp of two major changes – the introduction of the Lockheed Martin F-35B Lighting II Joint Strike Fighter and the growth of the fleet from 30 to 33 ships – that will change the way the fleet trains and fights, the director of expeditionary warfare told USNI News.

Maj. Gen. Chris Owens, who took over the expeditionary warfare directorate (OPNAV N95) four months ago, said in a Dec. 10 interview that his biggest priority in this new job is amphibious fleet readiness – having the maximum amount of ships deployed or ready to deploy, and ensuring those ships are maintained and modernized to stay relevant throughout their entire service lives.

To that end, the fleet stands to make some important gains in the coming years. F-35B integration efforts will bring greater capability to existing ships, helping them leverage the fifth-generation fighter capability and operate more effectively with the rest of the Navy’s surface fleet. And the larger number of ships in the amphibious fleet open up opportunities for single-ship deployments, taking on more missions in the Pacific and providing better training to sailors and Marines.

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US Navy Orders 12th LPD 17 San Antonio Class Amphibious Ship, new Burke Class Destroyer

Gulf shipbuilders gained a new amphibious ship late Friday, and the US Navy has agreed to add a destroyer at a key Maine shipyard. The moves reflect the resolution of a long-standing “hull swap agreement” involving the ships and the Navy’s two biggest shipbuilders.

Huntington Ingalls Industries received a $200 million not-to-exceed undefinitized contract action (or UCA) to order long-lead time material and perform design work on LPD 28, a yet-to-be-named 12th ship in the LPD 17 San Antonio class of amphibious transport dock ships. The ship, which the Navy did not request, was added by Congress to increase the fleet’s amphibious fleet and better meet US Marine Corps requirements.

The total cost of a “fully-scoped” LPD 28 is expected to be around $2.023 billion, the Navy said last year.

As a result of the award, General Dynamics will receive another DDG 51 Arleigh Burke-class destroyer beyond the batch already on order.

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Australian Jeep Carrier HMAS Adelaide Commissioned

Australia's amphibious capability has been boosted by the commissioning in Sydney on 3 December of HMAS Adelaide : the Royal Australian Navy's (RAN's) second 27,800-tonne landing helicopter dock (LHD).

Based on the design of the Spanish Navy strategic projection ship Juan Carlos , the 231 m Adelaide joins first-of-class HMAS Canberra , which was commissioned in November 2014.

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HMS Ocean Helicopter Carrier to Decommission in 2018

Britain’s Royal Navy is to decommission its only helicopter assault carrier and hand the task over to one of the new aircraft carriers being built by BAE Systems.

Plans to scrap HMS Ocean in 2018 were part of the strategic defence and security review (SDSR) unveiled Nov 23. The decision to axe the Royal Navy’s flagship only became known when it was briefly mentioned by defence minister Earl Howe in the House of Lords.

The ship, currently the largest in the Royal Navy, only completed a £65 million (US$97.8 million) refit last year.

The Royal Navy denied the warship was being axed earlier than planned.

“HMS Ocean will not decommission early and will continue in service as planned well into this Parliament. As part of the SDSR process, the decision was taken not to extend her and to decommission her in 2018, in line with her 20-year life span,” the navy said in a statement.

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Brazilian Navy Purchasing French LPD, ex FS Siroco

The Brazilian Navy will commission the French Foudre-class FS Siroco (L 9012) landing platform dock (LPD) by 31 December, the service told IHS Jane's on 18 November.

The exact date for commissioning is yet to be finalised, the service added, but necessary documentation for the ship's transfer of property is expected to be signed by 31 December.

Brazil plans to soon commission the French Navy's LPD Siroco, pictured here in Toulon, after Portugal dropped interest in July. (Victor Barreira)

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US Marines Choose BAE & SAIC for Amphibious Combat Vehicle Prototypes

The Marine Corps chose BAE and SAIC from a field of five competitors to build competing prototypes for the long-awaited Amphibious Combat Vehicle. BAE, a dominant player in tracked armored vehicles, had teamed with Italian armsmaker Iveco to offer a variant of the Italians’ wheeled SuperAV. SAIC, best known as a consulting firm, offered a variant of the Singaporean Terrex. “BAE’s contract is for $103.8 million, while SAIC’s is for $121.5 million,” the Marines announced at 5 pm.

The awards are a major step forward for the service. The Marines had struggled for years to replace their Amphibious Assault Vehicle — aging, lumbering, and terribly vulnerable to roadside bombs — whose ability to carry Marines from ship to shore and inland is central to the service’s identity. After early doubts about the ACV candidates’ capabilities, the Marines are now confident the winner will be as fast on the water as the old AAV and vastly better on land, with mobility similar to the Army’s eight-wheel-drive Stryker and — perhaps most importantly — protection equal to an MRAP (Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected) vehicle.

Each of the two winners will build 16 vehicles to be delivered from January through April 2017. (The current contract says 13 but Marine officials pledge to execute an option for three more once the funding is available). That unusually large number of prototypes will speed up testing and development of tactics, with multiple activities running simultaneously and allowing any broken-down vehicles to be quickly replaced, ACV program manager John Garner told reporters this afternoon. By the time the program enters its formal operational evaluation (OPEVAL) in late 2017 (early fiscal year 2018), said Garner, “the Marines will have already learned how they’re going to operate these vehicles.”

After that comes a downselect to a single winner, who’ll build up to 204 test vehicles at an average procurement unit cost (APUC) of no more than $6.5 million each. That and other costs to date will constitute the $1.2 billion “ACV 1.1″ program, which enters service ca. 2021. But immediately on 1.1’s heels comes “ACV 1.2,” which will produce up to 490 vehicles of multiple variants. (All ACV 1.1s are regular troop carriers; ACV 1.2s will also include command vehicles and recovery vehicles, essentially armored tow-trucks). The service wants the transition from 1.1 to 1.2 to be as smooth as possible, with as little new development and testing as possible, which means the winner of 1.1 will have a lock on 1.2 unless they drop the ball.

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USS Kearsarge Acts as Jeep Carrier, AV-8B Harriers Conduct Airstrikes on Daesh/Islamic State

Naval Aviation rejoined the fight against ISIL Nov. 19 when AV-8B Harriers from Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron (VMM)162(Reinforced)launched from the amphibious assault ship USS Kearsarge (LHD 3) to conduct their first missions over Iraq in support of Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR).

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US Marine Corps Aviation Needs to be More Flexible, be Tailored to Missions

The Navy and Marine Corps should explore ways to make Marine aircraft a more useful part of the naval battle force – using alternate mixes of aircraft types on amphibious ship flight decks, finding additional missions for those aircraft, and pursuing increased connectivity to the rest of the naval fleet, the deputy commandant for aviation told USNI News.

In recent memory, the aviation combat element (ACE) in the Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) has served to support the MEU’s ground combat element. The ACE brought Marines and their weapons ashore in combat situations and helped bring materiel ashore in humanitarian assistance missions.

But Lt. Gen. Jon Davis argues the MEU, and particularly the ACE – which already includes the game-changing MV-22 Osprey and will soon include the equally transformative F-35B Joint Strike Fighter – can and should do more.

“We have the finest aircraft carriers in the world, we have the finest submarines in the world, we have the finest amphibious ships – we might need those amphibious ships to be doing something a little bit different than we’ve asked of them in the past to be value-added to the subs and the cruisers and the carriers, to be more value-added episodically before we reconfigure to the traditional mission and force contribution you expect an amphibious ship to be able to do,” Davis said in a Nov. 16 sit-down interview in his office.

“At the end of the day, we need them to power project Marine ground forces, a MAGTF (Marine Air-Ground Task Force), ashore, and they need to be able to do that. But is there more that we can get out of those ships, and what do we have to do to those ships to get more out of them?”

First, Davis argued, the Marines need to rethink what should constitute the ACE onboard amphibious ships.

“You in your brain, and all of us in our brains, have, this is a MEU: six Harriers or six F-35s, 12 V-22s, three or four CH-53s, seven skids [light attack helicopters], some VMU [Marine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadrons],” Davis said.

But what if that combination, which includes a little bit of everything, means that the ACE is not optimized for anything?

“There are many scenarios where we would want to have the L-class carrier loaded with F-35Bs – the full squadron, 16 airplanes or more, plus four to six V-22s with a tanker package,” Davis said.

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Spanish Navy Embarks US Marine Corps V-22 Squadron

The Spanish Navy (Armada Española) has claimed to be the first non-US naval service to embark a squadron of the US Marine Corps' (USMC's) Bell Boeing MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft on board one of its ships. The embarkation took place during Exercise 'Trident Juncture 2015' that started in early October 2015 and jointly hosted by Spain, Portugal and Italy.

The four Osprey transports, which combine the vertical lift-off capability of a helicopter with the higher speed and payload flight of a turbo-prop aircraft, are stationed at the Morón de la Frontera Air Base in southern Spain.

For 'Trident Juncture 2015' the aircraft were embarked with six of the Armada's AV-8B Harrier and an AB-212 helicopter from the 27,000-tonne landing helicopter dock (LHD) Juan Carlos I .

"This event is a historic achievement both for the Marines and the Armada Española," said the Spanish Navy. "Never before has an American [Osprey] squadron formed part of an air unit embarked on a ship that does not belong to the US Navy."

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How the US Marine Corps Wants to Use the EPF/JHSV for Operations

The Auxiliary Platforms and Payloads Council at the Pentagon has focused its efforts on using the Expeditionary Fast Transport for Marines’ afloat command and control requirements, as well as looking at technical enablers to allow Marines to operate from the Littoral Combat Ship, the head of the amphibious warfare branch said last week.

Capt. Bryon Johnson said at the National Defense Industrial Association’s annual Expeditionary Warfare Conference in Portsmouth, Va., that the council was not considering a formal Marine Corps mission package for the LCS but instead was looking at more ad hoc adaptive force packages for LCS and the Expeditionary Fast Transport ship (EPF), formerly called the Joint High Speed Vessel.

A particular interest is putting intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) assets and unmanned vehicles on the EPF, he said.

“We are looking at ways to put adaptive force packages on [EPF], particularly for command and control … using the [EPF] maybe as an afloat command center” in humanitarian assistance missions, for example.

On LCS, he said the council is examining what enablers the Marines would need to operate from the platform – with extra berthing being a top concern, he said.

However, he made clear that these efforts were not meant to replace amphibious warships, but rather to help reduce the high demand on the amphibs.

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GAO to USMC: Rushing Armored Vehicle (ACV) Development can be Costly Later

The Marine Corps' plan to fast track the development of its next-generation amphibious vehicle could mean some design and mechanical problems might not emerge until after the first systems hit the fleet, according to a government watchdog agency.

As the Marine Corps prepares this month to select two competitors to produce prototypes of its Amphibious Combat Vehicle 1.1, the Government Accountability Office commended the service for following best practices tied to major acquisition programs. But the GAO is also warning Marine officials to keep an eye on two key points.

Developing the first round of ACVs before the preliminary design review is complete “poses risk,” the Oct. 28 report states. That could result in costly modifications down the road.

The service's plan to combine preliminary and critical design reviews into one event — just 90 days after development begins — leaves too little time to address issues, the report states. GAO officials cited the canceled Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle program as an example of what the Marine Corps should not repeat. The EFV's critical design review was conducted at a similar stage, but prototype testing continued for three years — long after the findings could inform the design. After 15 years, the $3.7 billion program was deemed too expensive to maintain.

“If the ACV 1.1 does not demonstrate the expected amphibious capabilities, then more development than currently anticipated may be required for ACV 1.2 to achieve ship-to-shore amphibious capability and greater effort may be needed to retrofit ACV 1.1 vehicles to achieve the same capabilities,” the report said.

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Russian Pop Press Claim: Egypt Buying 50 Ka-52k Naval Attack Helicopters for use on Mistrals

TASS says Egypt has agreed to buy over 50 Ka-52 naval helicopters that Russia had produce to deploy on the Mistral helicopter carriers.

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TASS link (in Russian).

Egypt Buys Ex-Russian French Built Mistral Amhibious Warfare Ships

France has agreed to sell two Mistral helicopter carriers to Egypt after their sale to Russia was cancelled in August and will not incur a financial loss in the transaction, government spokesman Stephane Le Foll said.

Cairo has sought to boost its military power in the face of a two-year insurgency based across the Suez Canal in the Sinai peninsula and fears the conflict in neighbouring Libya could spill over. Egypt's allies are also keen to burnish its image in a region beset by turmoil.

"They agreed on the principle and the terms of the acquisition by Egypt" of the two Mistral warships, President Francois Hollande's office said in a statement after he spoke to his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.

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Canada was in Talks to buy French Mistrals Prior to Election

anada was actively pursuing -- at the political level -- the possible acquisition of the controversial French-built Mistral-class helicopter carriers, several defence, diplomatic and military industry sources have told The Canadian Press.

The effort has ground to halt, however, largely because of the federal election campaign -- and it may slip away entirely because the French are now in a position to entertain bids from other countries for the 22,000-tonne ships, originally built for Russia.

The original deal was cancelled because of Moscow's annexation of Crimea and its ongoing support of anti-government forces in eastern Ukraine, but it was only last month that the French government concluded a US $1.01 billion refund agreement, a plan that was approved Thursday by the lower house of the French National Assembly.

The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the matter publicly, say Defence Minister Jason Kenney was -- until the election call --"actively engaged" in sounding out the French, including a face-to-face exchange at the most recent NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels last June.

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Wait! What?! Saudi King Wants to buy French Mistrals...FOR EGYPT?!

Saudi Arabia keen to buy completed Mistral carriers for Egypt

French daily Le Monde reported that Saudi Arabia is keen to buy the two Mistral carriers ordered by Russia and transfer them to Egypt.

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US Marine Corps Declares F-35B IOC, Ready for War

The US Marine Corps has decided for good or ill to declare their F-35B has acheived IOC or Initial Operational Capability.   This means the F-35B can do to war.  However, it will not have its entire capability set.  That 'Initial' bit is still set.  The F-35B can do data fusion for 4 F-35Bs at once.  It cannot fire its cannon (which is an external pod on the B anyways).  It successfully went to sea on the USS Wasp, but, unfortunately, could only have 50% of the aircraft being combat ready at any time.

The first squadron will go to Okinawa.  Some will be based on land.  Some will be aboard an LHD.

This is being reported all over the place.

France Offers 785 Euro to Russia for Mistral Contract Cancellation

France has offered Russia its terms to scrap a contentious contract to supply two warships that was suspended due to the Ukraine crisis, but Moscow judged the sum as unacceptable, a report said Friday.

Russian defense sources told Kommersant newspaper that the French side is willing to pay €785 million ($890 million), and the documents are now "being studied" by the Russian government, defense ministry and other relevant parties which participated in the 2011 deal.

But the daily reported that Moscow was not happy with the French offer, with the defense ministry claiming that Russian firms have now incurred 1.16 billion euros of costs associated with the ships.

The fate of the two Mistral helicopter carriers has plagued French-Russia ties for over a year, following the decision by Paris to put the 1.2 billion euro deal on ice as the West slapped sanctions on Russia over its annexation of Crimea and alleged backing for separatist rebels in Ukraine.

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