Marine-Moving Medium Landing Ship Critical To China Fight Put On Hold Again By Navy
The Marines say they really need a Medium Landing Ship for a future conflict in the Pacific, but Navy requirements have ballooned its costs.
Geoff Ziezulewicz
Posted on Dec 20, 2024
The U.S. Navy’s Medium Landing Ship (LSM), a platform many view as crucial to transporting Marines among remote islands in a future war against China, is dead in the water for the time being. Reports emerged this week that sea service leaders balked at high cost estimates that have come in from industry to build the vessel. The pause raises questions about how the U.S. Marine Corps will enact its West Pacific, island-hopping concepts of operations, known as Expeditionary Advance Base Operations (EABO), and it is the latest delay to afflict the program.
Formerly known as the Light Amphibious Warship (LAW) and also referred to as the Landing Ship Medium, the vessel is envisioned as delivering forces right onto a beach without any established port facilities. It would ferry mobile, platoon-sized Marine units to islands where they would fire anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCM) at Chinese forces and collect data for the other U.S. forces, among other tasks.
Those Marines would also work to deter opponents in situations short of actual conflict, while helping to control littoral areas and seascapes. Such missions would be conducted by the new Marine Littoral Regiments (MLR). They would occur within China’s striking distance, likely in the southern Japanese islands and in the Philippines, part of a sea-denial campaign spanning the South China Sea and East China Sea, analysts say.
https://www.twz.com/sea/marine-moving-medium-landing-ship-critical-to-china-fight-put-on-hold-again-by-navy
