Friday, June 5, 2015

Unusual new Navy warship takes to the seas



Two of the U.S. Navy's newest — and most unusual — ships were recently deployed in Hawaii.

The USNS Montford Point is not just the first ship of its class—it's the first of its kind. The ship "became fully operations capable and delivered to Military Sealift Command just last month," Lieutenant Commander Brian Tague of the U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command told VICE News in Hawaii. It practically has that new-ship smell.

The ship called a Mobile Landing Platform (MLP). Part of the vessel has a big ramp that connects to any one of a variety of other ships that would normally unload cargo at a dock. The other part of the ship can, after some fiddling, effectively emulate a beach for amphibious landing craft, a.k.a. "connectors."

When used in conjunction with those connectors, the MLP allows for massive big transport ships to unload their cargo miles from shore, without having to rely on a port or other fixed infrastructure.

Typically, getting things from the water onto land involves a heck of a bottleneck, often requiring vulnerable fixed infrastructure that can cost hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars. The only other option is employing highly specialized and costly amphibious ships and landing craft. The USNS Montford Point and future MLPs exist to eliminate some of the bottlenecks by emulating a pier while also acting like a specialist amphibious mothership.

For more of the Vice News article: news.vice.com


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