USNI News Video: Sea Base USS Lewis B. Puller Finding Its Way in 5th Fleet
By: Megan Eckstein
April 3, 2018 7:24 PM
ABOARD EXPEDITIONARY SEA BASE USS LEWIS B. PULLER – U.S. 5th Fleet is experimenting with one of the Navy’s newest warships with a mission to support amphibious, special forces and mine countermeasures operations at sea. USS Lewis B. Puller (ESB-3) is the Navy’s first purpose-built expeditionary sea base in decades, and sailors and Marines are hard at work learning how to innovate with a wide cross-section of U.S. and international military partners.
The ship is already the byproduct of innovation: Naval Sea Systems Command in 2011 took a commercial Alaska-class tanker and scooped out the middle to create the Montford Point-class expeditionary transfer dock (T-ESD-1), and then slapped a flight deck over the top to create the Puller-class ESB. For about $650 million, the Navy gets a ship with a four-spot flight deck for helicopters and tiltrotor aircraft, a massive mission bay with cranes and equipment for small boat and unmanned vehicle operations, and an abundance of unused space waiting to be filled, Capt. Joseph Femino, commanding officer of Puller’s gold crew, told USNI News during a March visit to the ship.
https://news.usni.org/2018/04/03/usni-news-video-sea-base-uss-lewis-b-puller-finding-way-5th-fleet
