The Navy and Marines Are Having an Awkward Fight Over Amphibious Warships
The newly released proposed 2024 defense budget, totaling $842 billion in spending, reveals the U.S. Navy wants to maintain what it’s called a “strategic pause” on building new amphibious warships used by the service’s “Gator Navy” to transport Marine Corps units—freezing construction of new vessels until 2027 and retiring multiple amphibious vessels from service early.
Marine Corps commandant, Gen. David Berger, is less than pleased. He insists he wants to preserve the Marines’ current 31-ship fleet of amphibious warfare vessels, arguing a shrunken fleet may mean crisis response forces are unavailable in emergencies.
Maintaining the 31-ship fleet would require hanging on to four Whidbey Island-class dock landing ships (USS Tortuga, Ashland, Germantown, and Gunston Hall) the Navy wants to retire early, 30 to 36 years into their 40-year service lives. Or it would require building replacements, which the Navy brass don’t want to do yet.
Dock landing ships (LSDs) carry other, smaller ship-to-shore connectors, i.e. landing craft and amphibious armored vehicles inside their floodable well decks. So, they’re not the landing craft featured in Saving Private Ryan or the TV show The Pacific—they’re ships carrying those landing craft.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/the-navy-and-marines-are-having-an-awkward-fight-over-amphibious-warships/ar-AA18HMHM
