Quote:
Originally Posted by Llarry
There has been some progress on the Navy/Marine program to build medium landing ships (LSMs). The details are not yet clear to me, but the Navy is pursuing two alternative designs:
1) An LSM based on the U.S. Army vehicle landing ship (LSV) and displacing about 2500 tons full load.
2) A Dutch company's tank landing ship (LST) of smaller size.
Hopefully these can be built at a reasonable cost.
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The Navy has announced that the chosen design is the LST-100 design by Dutch firm Damen Shipbuilding. The ships will be built in the USA and hopefully changes will be minimal to retain low cost. Bollinger Shipyards on the Gulf Coast will build at the least the first few of the 18 to 35 LSMs to be built. The first will be the USS McClung (LSM 1), named after Marine Corps Major Megan McClung who was the first female Naval Academy graduate killed in action (by an IED during the Iraq War.)