Army’s new Landing Craft Heavy announced
Defence has selected a design by Damen Shipyards Group as the preferred option for the Army’s landing-craft heavy.
CAPTION: Landing Ship Transport 100 (LST100) concept. Supplied by Damen Shipyards Group.
This announcement is a significant step in the establishment of a littoral manoeuvre fleet and is the next stage in the transformation of the Australian Army to one focused on littoral manoeuvre and long-range strike.
Damen Shipyards Group’s Landing Ship Transport 100 (LST100) will provide a capability that is essential to the restructure and re-posture of the Army.
Click to enlarge
Along with landing-craft medium and amphibious vehicles, this new vessel will support a strategy of denial which includes deploying and sustaining land forces with long-range land and maritime strike capabilities in littoral environments.
Eight landing-craft heavy, based on the LST100, will be built by Australian shipbuilder Austal at the Henderson Shipyard in Western Australia, subject to acceptable commercial negotiations and demonstrated performance.
LST100 has a 3900-tonne displacement, is 100 meters long and 16 meters wide.
It will be capable of operating with other vessels to undertake a range of tasks including troop insertion and extraction, logistics movements and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief.
The vessel will be capable of carrying more than 500 tonnes of military vehicles and equipment.
It is intended to carry six Abrams tanks or 11 Redback Infantry Fighting Vehicles or 26 HIMARS – and will be fitted with self-defence weapon systems and Australian military communications.
Construction of the first Landing Craft Heavy is expected to start in 2026.
Minister for Defence Industry and Capability Delivery Pat Conroy said funding for the new littoral manoeuvre vessels was part of the Integrated Investment Program (2024-34), which was helping to grow the Australian industrial base and supply chains, and create highly skilled, well-paid jobs.
“This project is an important part of our plans for continuous naval shipbuilding in both South Australia and Western Australia, which is creating thousands of well-paid and high-skilled jobs,” Mr Conroy said
“Importantly, these vessels will be built in Australia, from Australian steel.
“This not only underscores the government’s commitment to keep Australians safe, but also to a safer future made in Australia.”
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Yair right! I’m still trying to work out why the NAVY has two really big ships that are TOTALLY useless except as ferries for the ARMY. I suppose we really might need them when we invade China – but they are not warships, just great big, slow, useless, ugly, defenceless TARGETS (and maritme money, personnel pits) Don’t even mention those $%*@!$ OPV things. Australia needs to be careful or our money could be wasted. I suppose we could simply borrow more from whoever and never pay it back. Now we are debating Landing Craft, Not very elegantly put comments but I isn’t an elegant person, man, other, thing, or it.
The LHD’s primary role is for transporting the Army, it’s ground vehicles and helicopters to forward locations. They aren’t aircraft carriers in the traditional sense. Never have been and likely never will be. The other combatants I.e. frigates and destroyers are there to escort the LHD’s.
Having this capability is not always about invading another country, but being able to transport defensive forces, i.e HIMARS, AShMs, Artillery etc. to where they’re needed to defend and deter further afield.
Army, it is flying an AWE, will be interesting to see how it is crewed and when it is supposed to enter service.
I can’t understand the need for LCHs or any amphibious assault craft. Who we are we going to launch an amphibious assault against? I hope they don’t think we are going to assault China! We need defensive equipment.
The LCHs, LCMs, and LHDs are there to forward deploy and manoeuvre our defensive forces around for a forward defence approach. I.e. ferrying the army forward to our near neighbours to enable our long range fires and other capabilities to hold enemies at risk a greater distance before they get too close to main land Australia.
Not that I’m against holding someone to account, however if your going to do it, can you be a little more accurate.
It’s interesting that you’re blaming the current Govt for things like the Hunter Class, Arafura class, Taipans and funding etc. if you look back a little bit further I think you’ll find that a liberal govt ordered the Taipans and followed Army’s advice to under support them. They also ordered the Hunter, Arafura, and Hobart classes. So, the faults with those lie with the Govt’s who ordered them and or the Dept of Defence staff who oversaw those projects. Missile count aside, the Hobart’s aren’t that bad a vessel.
The same thing could be said of the Hunters when they enter service. The sensor suite and the other tech that they’ll have onboard will be top notch. Remember that they are anti submarine vessels first. While they’ll have a top notch Anti air sensor suite and CMS, they are not being purchased to be air warfare specialists. If batch 2 are planned wisely with an additional 32 cells and also maintain their towed array, then they’ll be much more of a top tier multirole specialist.
As for the Arafura OPVs, they were never meant to be anything other than a larger patrol boat for illegal fisheries and immigration patrols. Fantasies about them packing missiles and patrolling the South China sea were always far fetched. The OPV issues would likely be traced back to poor discipline in setting capability outcomes and change management, so the responsibility of the Dept of Defence and lack of govt oversight by the last Govt.
As for the current Govt, they inherited a lot of what is being complained about. A whole host of projects or ideas, with no funding attached. Cancelling something that has no funding to begin with isn’t really cancelling anything as it was never ordered.
The current Govt love them or hate them have reevaluated Hunter and decided to reduce and reallocate so that we can get the 11 GPFs. To have down selected in such a short amount of time is very quick. You can expect a govt to go out on day one and sign an order before even analysing things. Otherwise armchair critics will then complain that they didn’t do any research. They’ve also got the landing craft projects moving, and Guided weapons enterprise (something that the last Govt let sit dormant for 2 years).
I could go on, but I’m sure I’ll run out of space.
Both the LNP and Labor are as guilty as one another. But don’t forget the last time Labor was in power not a single naval ship was ordered let alone built. I notice you have no criticism of Labor’s constant change for the replacement of the ANZAC class and we still don’t know what shipbuilder is going to build these frigates. The Air Force received 36 superhornets and growlers as an interim for the F35’s, yet any talk of purchasing off the shelf submarines (such as the Soryu class) is verboten. We will probably end up paying the same amount for refurbing the 25 year old Collins than buying brand new conventional subs while we work out if, if we get these nuclear Virginias from America.
Yes, you are right that the previous government stuffed up most of the defence acquisitions, but like you, I could go on about amount of acquisitions that are behind, over budget or cancelled altogether.
Regards
Brad
Harrison
Indeed! this Albo govt is all about absolutely destroying our armed forces, the Hunter class frigates over weight, under gunned, useless before even being built. Nuclear subs, nothing but talk, no works started on a base in WA, we don’t need a base on the east coast. Navantia built ships hopeless number of missiles, 5 out of 6 Anzacs buggered not to mention the Collins class rust buckets. Cutbacks all across the army, soon as we got the Taipans we didn’t want them etc etc. What a shambles our defence forces are, all because Albo wants to bend over backwards to the Chinese. Pretty boy Albo, useless just the most useless anti Semitic prime minister ever. Two things only really we need, short and long range missiles and long range drones by the hundreds. What do we have? Nothing. Our navy will be clobbered before we even get out of the Coral sea, what a mess. And now what? New heavy landing craft give us a break, sunk before they even get to the beach. Damon OPV, oh no! we can’t have 50 cal guns on them we might offend the Chinese, we’ll have 25mm instead, God save us from the idiots and woke morons in Canberra. On I could go. Missiles you Canberra dimwits. God save the King cos nothing will save this country under Albo. Thanks all.
Fairly good rant except this writer doesn’t understand weapon calibres and the difference between imperial and metric. A .50 cal is 12.5mm, only half the size of the 25mm he disparages.
Another naval announcement. This government loves to announce naval programmes but they seem never to deliver. Where are the OPV’s? The Hunter Class frigates reduced to 6 platforms. No decision on the so called “lesser” frigates with a convoluted plan to have the first 3 built overseas by a yet to be announced builder and the rest in Australia. What happened to the Mine Counter Measure capability? Virtually all funding on the hope (and a prayer) for nuclear submarines that won’t be here for another decade depending on who you talk to. The whole of Defence is an unmitigated disaster with virtually new helicopters being destroyed, no new offensive aircraft for the Air Force and the armoured capability of the army guttered.
The only time I would believe this government is actually building any new naval ships is when someone smashed a bottle of champagne over the bow of the ship as it’s being launched.