(Amerika) United States Marine Corps (USMC)

[Schneemann]

Marine Corps Begins Water Testing for Future Landing Ship Concept

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. – Gears grinded as offshore supply vessel Resolution folded its long stern ramp on Friday and prepared to head into the Pacific for an afternoon session with a group of Marines and their drones.

The 254-foot Resolution, under contract with the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, pulled into Camp Pendleton’s Del Mar boat basin on Thursday to begin a series of experiments that the Marine Corps expects will help shape operational concepts and design for the Navy’s Landing Ship Medium. Resolution will also join the Army’s Project Convergence Capstone 3 experimentation that’s underway with the Marine Corps Tactical Systems Support Activity at Camp Pendleton. The offshore support vessel is a stern landing vessel that’s a prototype for the future LSM, officials said, and it’s one of three planned contracted OSVs that will shape those decisions for the LSM as a platform in a contested logistics environment. [...]

Resolution is one of three OSVs the service wants to get to help round out its Force Design concepts, LSM design and tactics, techniques and procedures for how the Marine Littoral Regiments will use the ships. It also will support other MCWL experimentation, including testing with the Tactical Resupply Unmanned Aerial System, or TRUAS, a 150-pound drone-like unmanned aircraft. [...]

The modifications added a 115-foot-long ramp, four landing pylons and two “strong backs” towers to the ship that support the ramp, said Ray Butler, a contractor and member of the Demonstration Assistance Team based at Indian Head, Md. The four thick, round pylons or “landing spuds” lower onto the coastal seafloor to provide stability for the ramp when it’s lowered onto a beach or coastal wall or rocks. Twin towers – one each at aft starboard and port – control the ramp and its cable system. The ramp is built in several sections – at 42 feet, 24 feet, and 44 feet wide each – that extend out and fold up. The end ramp section, or “flutters,” has four separate decks that can lift up or down to 14 degrees, enabling more stable loading onto an uneven beach or coastal terrain or quay wall, Butler said. [...] “The concept is wherever the Marines are at. The Marines come aboard, they do the tactical mission they need to do, they get off the ship and the ship goes back to pick up another unit or do another mission,” Butler said.

https://news.usni.org/2024/02/26/marine-...ip-concept

Schneemann