Australia And The U.S. Must Combine Their Heavy/Medium Landing Ship Programs

As the U.S. Navy does everything it can to delay the U.S. Marine Corps’ effort to refresh the old World War II-era Tank Landing Ship (LST) concept, Australia is marching forward with its own, similar landing ship ideas. With AUKUS, the two programs—both controversial, both delayed and both desperately needed—can enhance their bureaucratic viability by joining forces.

Last month, Australia just gave the mid-sized landing craft concept a great big boost. In a little-noticed section of Australia’s recently-released Defence Strategic Review, Australia’s defense tastemakers offered a full-throated affirmation of Marine Corps Commandant General David Berger’s oft-disregarded 3000-4000-ton Medium Landing Ship concept.

The Review says, in typical Australian bureaucratese, “it is essential to immediately accelerate the acquisition of LAND 8710 Phases 1-2—Army Littoral Manoeuvre Vessels (Landing Craft Medium and Heavy) and expand the scope of this capability.”

Translated into English, it appears Australia is—after years of trying—finally set upon procuring a brace of 3000-4000 ton landing craft, using the program to replace a long-retired but intensively-used set of eight 365-ton Balikpapan class landing vessels.

With both Australia and the United States now seeking a similar landing platform, the two countries should combine their efforts, fielding a truly interoperable landing vessel. By leveraging AUKUS-infused momentum, the oft-overlooked and frequently-delayed landing craft procurement effort can finally get underway, serving as a test-bed for the more complex efforts to come.

Move Forward With A Joint AUKUS Landing Craft

The two country’s landing craft programs share several programmatic similarities. They are unpopular with “Blue Water” sailors, and while the landing ships are useful, in-demand assets, they’ve been bypassed for funding. While U.S. observers gnash their teeth over the fact that the Landing Craft Medium program—once slated to start in 2023—was pushed back to FY 2025, Australia has struggled mightily for more than a decade to get their replacement heavy landing craft program underway.

In 2011, with the Balikpapan retirement looming, Australia started looking for a heavy landing craft with “improved ocean-going capabilities” operating in seas that exceed Sea State Four for approximately 60% of the year. The vessel was expected to carry some three Abrams M1A1 tanks and envisioned to withstand low-to-medium threats. The proposed initial operational capability was 2019, and, of course, nothing came of it, as the requirements seemed to be in flux, and the displacement of the replacement creeped up to 3,000-4,000 tons.

Today, both the Australian and the U.S. landing craft proposals align. With the U.S. Marine Corps wanting up to 35 austere variants of the notional Landing Craft Medium, and the U.S. Navy preferring to purchase up to 18 more sophisticated craft, Australia could race in, jump-start testing of an austere variant, and, potentially, help “prove out” some of the more controversial operational aspects of the U.S. design.

It would work.

A simple joint effort to build a modern LST would be an ideal testing ground to enhance joint Australia-US shipbuilding efforts. There’s real value in ironing out the bureaucratic challenges in sharing defense information before the two countries begin grappling with complex undersea platforms that are infused with critical defense knowledge in almost every weld and circuit. A robust, low-tech LST is a great place to start.

The Pacific Needs LSTs:

With virtually every single large Pacific Navy building or fielding some sort of large “conventional” high-tonnage amphibious vessel, the handy-sized, do-anything landing craft is a missing piece in the Pacific maritime ecosystem.

Australia, for it’s part, used the Balikpapan-class landing craft often. In 1974-5, the ships operated off Darwin, helping the region recover from Cyclone Tracey. In later years, the ships supported Australia Defense Force operations in Papua New Guinea, East Timor and the Solomon Islands. Today, the handy seventies-era ships are still in use by Philippine Navy and the Papua New Guinea Maritime Element.

After World War II, America’s “surplus” LSTs were in high demand as well. As I have written before, for almost 40 years after World War II, if a U.S. field commander needed something done or moved at sea, an LST would probably been tasked to do it.

Even now, the decrepit BRP Sierra Madre, an old rusted-out LST, long since transferred to the Philippines, is at the center of a swirling South China Sea drama. Deliberately grounded on the resource-rich Ayungin Shoal (known to Americans as Second Thomas Shoal) in 1999, it has—in an apt demonstration of the LST’s long-term utility—served as a lonely, isolated Filipino naval outpost ever since.

After World War II, with the advent of super-sized, integrated amphibious shipping, the utilitarian LST-type landing craft was de-emphasized. But the potential contribution from LST-like vessels is still important today, and, with new land assault vehicles, unmanned craft and long-range missiles, these small, handy, flat-bottomed ships may have more battlefield relevance than old-school conventional blue-water sailors want to admit. Joining forces with Australia may make real sense, particularly if Australia seems ready to push ahead with the project.