General Dynamics NASSCO has delivered the USNS Lewis B. Puller, the third ship within the U.S. Navy’s Mobile Landing Platform program and the primary to be configured as Afloat Forward Staging Base.

[contextly_sidebar id=”2nRHtQ5LqJFueEOO64CGX1vt7ilhFhKE”]The USNS Lewis B. Puller (MLP 3 AFSB) was delivered to the Navy in San Diego throughout a ceremony held final Friday on the NASSCO shipyard.

The Mobile Landing Platform (MLP) AFSB variant is optimized to help quite a lot of maritime-based missions and additional strengthens the Navy’s new seabasing capabilities, with an added flight deck, berthing, gasoline storage, gear storage, and restore areas. The ship is known as in honor of the late U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant General Lewis “Chesty” Puller, probably the most embellished Marine and the one one to be awarded 5 Navy Crosses.

Construction on the USNS Lewis B. Puller started in 2013.

MLPs are extremely versatile platforms that present logistics motion from sea to shore in help of a broad vary of navy operations.

The AFSB variant is designed round 4 core capabilities: aviation, berthing, gear staging space, and command and management. The ASFB modifications add a 52,000 square-foot flight deck, gasoline and gear storage, restore areas, magazines, mission planning areas and lodging for as much as 250 personnel. The ship is able to supporting a number of missions together with Air Mine Counter Measures (AMCM), counter-piracy operations, maritime safety operations, humanitarian assist and catastrophe aid missions and Marine Corps disaster response. The ship can also be designed to help MH-53 and MH-60 helicopters, and shall be upgraded to help MV-22 tilt rotor plane.

“This ship represents a leap forward in flexible capability for the U.S. Navy,” mentioned Capt. Henry Stevens, Strategic and Theater Sealift program supervisor for Program Executive Office (PEO), Ships. “NASSCO was able to leverage a mature design and hot production line to meet the Navy’s requirements for an AFSB platform while minimizing program cost and risk.”

The U.S. Navy has awarded NASSCO a contract for the element design and building of a fourth Mobile Landing Platform, to be configured as one other Afloat Forward Staging Base.

The MLP program contains 5 ships throughout two variants in help of the Maritime Prepositioning Force (MPF) and an AFSB initiative. USNS Montford Point (MLP 1) and USNS John Glenn (MLP 2) had been delivered and are at the moment serving within the U.S. Navy fleet. Construction on MLP 4 is scheduled to start within the fourth quarter of 2015 and a fifth AFSB ship is deliberate for procurement in fiscal 12 months 2017.

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