Oil Tanker-Turned-Aircraft Carrier Is Key to American Naval Expansion
Giant dock ship can carry jump jets, copters, hovercraft—and for cheap
On Oct. 11 the aircraft carrier
Gerald R. Ford, the largest warship ever built—and the most expensive—was floated for the first time at Huntington Ingalls’ shipyard in Newport News, Virginia. The 1,100-foot-long Ford, under construction since 2009 at a cost of $14 billion, boasts a new electromagnetic catapult and facilities for more than 70 warplanes and helicopters, including next-generation drones and stealth fighters still in development.
The sheer awe attending Ford’s progress towards front-line service, slated for 2016, has obscured a less visually impressive but arguably more important milestone for the world’s leading maritime force. On Sept. 15, shipyard workers at General Dynamics’ National Steel and Shipbuilding Company in San Diego floated the
John Glenn, the second example of a new but little-known class of dock ship called a “mobile landing platform.”
Few people appreciate it, but the innocuous-looking
John Glenn is also a sort of aircraft carrier … in everything but name. But she’s a different kind of carrier than Ford. She’s less specialized and much less heavily armed and armored—and greatly cheaper as a consequence: just $500 million. Her construction, starting in 2012, represents an important trend in the U.S. Navy........
John Glenn, her predecessor
Montford Point and two more planned platform ships are modified versions of an oil tanker, minus the oil tanks. The 840-foot ships are little more than vast empty storage and a sprawling deck. The Navy envisions buying various equipment kits that can be installed on the MLPs to help them perform different missions.
“One could easily envision this ship serving as a repair ship, a hospital ship, an aviation depot-support ship, or a dedicated [Littoral Combat Ship] mothership in the future — given the appropriate mission capability package was developed and fitted. It’s 800 feet of ‘use your imagination,’” Adm. Mark Buzby, head of Military Sealift Command, told Breaking Defense.
Even without a kit fitted, the baseline vessel has special features. By taking in seawater,
John Glenn and the other MLPs can partially submerge, bringing their decks flush with the waves so that hovercraft can move on and off. In this way the MLPs are able to send troops and supplies ashore in the wake of a natural disaster or as part of an invasion or peacekeeping force.
Future kits could include a hangar with extra aviation facilities. The next two dock ships after
John Glenn, known as Afloat Forward Staging Bases, are going to be built with the flying gear already installed. The MLPs’ decks can support vertical-takeoff drones, helicopters, V-22 tiltrotors and Harrier and F-35B jump jets. Just two other U.S. ship types—carriers and big-deck assault ships—can launch fixed-wing planes..........