HII’s Ingalls Shipbuilding launched the first Flight II San Antonio-class amphibious warship, the company announced this week.
Harrisburg (LPD-30) was moved on a specialized rail system from shore to the yard’s floating dry dock and lowered into the water at the Mississippi yard on Saturday.
The Flight IIs were created after a 2014 review found that a variant of the San Antonio-class ships would be the most cost effective option to replace the 1980 and 1990s-era Harpers Ferry/Whidbey Island-class amphibious warships.
The ship yard has two Flight II LPDs under construction – Harrisburg (LPD-30) and Pittsburgh (LPD-31). A third Flight II, Philadelphia (LPD 32), is in the planning phases.
The launch follows a $9.6 billion multi-year deal between the Navy and HII for four amphibious warships – LPD-33, LPD-34 and LPD35, as well as the America-class big deck amphibious warship Helmand Province (LHA-10). The total coast of the deal, including government furnished equipment, is $11.5 billion, USNI News understands.
The contract for the new Flight IIs follows an extended “strategic pause” on buying amphibious ships and a Pentagon study evaluating their capability and cost. The new contract will keep the San Antonio line open for the better part of the next decade.
“In our negotiations with Huntington Ingalls, we wanted to make sure that we had the labor force to build these ships on the sequence that we’re looking to do, which is a two-per-year cadence on the LPDs and a four-year cadence on the LHA,” Tom Rivers, the executive director for amphibious, auxiliary and sealift programs and the Navy’s program executive office ships, told reporters last month.
“What this multi-ship procurement allows us to do is retire some of the older ships as we replace them in the out years and maintain that 31 amphibious ship floor … that’s 10 big deck amphibs and 21 LPDs. [That] is where we think we need to sustain our floor of amphibs,” Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Eric Austin, deputy commandant for combat development and integration, told reports last month.
“It essentially is a one in, one out … that’s what we’re going to have to do. Congress has asked us to report annually to make sure we’re maintaining that right balance for amphibs.”
