The Navy expects to complete an analysis of alternatives (AoA) for the envisioned LSD(X) next year with foreign designs among the range of options, Rear Adm. David Lewis, the service’s program executive officer for ships, said Friday.
Lewis said he anticipates the AoA will be complete in “about a year” as the Navy reviews the various options for the next class of amphibious dock landing ships. The Navy is examining a modified version of the LPD-17 San Antonio-class transport dock ship, foreign designs including the French amphibious assault ship Mistral (L9013) and the possibility of an entirely new design.
“We are looking at foreign designs,” he told Defense Daily in an interview at is Navy Yard office in Washington. “There has been a lot of innovation in the amphibious world in foreign navies. Some of the navies have done some very innovative things in that area.”
Modifying the LPD-17 hull for LSD(X) could save money in the design phase of the program but would also carry the downside of using a 15-year-old design that does not incorporate the latest technologies into the production process gained from a fresh design, Lewis said.
“It would carry some of that older design characteristics and that drives cost to some extent,” he said. “A new design allows us to bring current technology and current design principles into a ship, but that carries a cost in terms of having to do the design and time to do the design. But it could significantly reduce the cost of the ship in production.”
LPD-17s, built by Huntington Ingalls Industries [HII] , cost about $1.8 billion-$1.9 billion per ship and have more aviation capabilities than would be needed on the LSD(X), he said.
“A lot of that is driven by the capability of the ship,” he said. “An LSD is nominally not required to be that capable.”
The LSD(X) is intended to replace the LSD-49 Harpers Ferry and eventually the LSD-41 Whidbey classes of landing dock ships, and is expected to enter procurement in the second half of this decade.