Austal said it welcomed the announcement by the Australian Government on the selection of Damen’s Landing Ship Transport 100 (LST100) as the preferred design for the Australian Defence Force’s Landing Craft Heavy, to be constructed by Austal Australia.
Eight Landing Craft Heavy vessels, based on the LST100, will be built by Austal at the Henderson Defence Precinct in Western Australia, subject to acceptable commercial negotiations and demonstrated performance.
Austal Limited Chief Executive Paddy Gregg said the announcement, from Minister for Defence Industry and Capability Delivery Pat Conroy, was another positive step forward towards continuous naval shipbuilding in Western Australia and a significant opportunity for industry comprising the Henderson Defence Precinct.
“The announcement on the selection of a design for Landing Craft Heavy is great news for the Australian Defence Force and all industry stakeholders, demonstrating the Australian Government’s clear commitment to achieving continuous naval shipbuilding in Western Australia, and delivering an effective littoral capability for the Australian Army. Austal looks forward to constructing this important new capability for Australia, following the anticipated finalisation of the Strategic Shipbuilding Agreement and commencement of the Landing Craft Medium contract in 2025.”
Damen’s LST100 vessel design has a 3,900-tonne displacement, with a length overall (LOA) of 100 metres and a beam (width) of 16 metres. The Landing Craft Heavy 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,11 Redback Infantry Fighting Vehicles or 26 HIMARS and will be fitted with self-defence weapons systems and Australian military communications.
Subject to acceptable commercial negotiations and demonstrated performance under the Strategic Shipbuilding Agreement, Austal is expected to commence construction of the first Landing Craft Heavy vessel in 2026. The potential value of the project to Austal’s order book is yet to be fully determined and will be developed through the ongoing commercial discussions with the Australian Government in the coming months.
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They look like descent designs but for 2 things- 1, a minuscule level of armament for self defence (the image appears to show only one gun mounted on the bow). 2, according to Damen’s web page they can only go at 15 knots. I think it would benefit from an RWS either side of the superstructure and why are amphibious ships always so slow?
My guess is they move fairly slowly because they have the hydrodynamics of a brick and are heavily loaded.
I had not taken much notice of this program, which I had thought was to replace the current Heavy Landing Craft Balikpapan class at 44.5m long and 316 tonnes with a similar vessel.
How wrong I was!
These are 8 mini HMAS Tobruks! 100m long and 3900 tonnes, thats at quite a capability.
Pat Conroy calls them Landing craft heavy but Landing Ship Transport is a more accurate description, how many people know what LST100 means?.
How do these vessels fit into our Defence strategy?
The Arafura class and its benefits of border/sea control and (if upgraded) warfighting tier 3, gets cut in half, meanwhile the golden child of Australian shipbuilding gets to build no less than eight of these 3900 tonne vessels to slowly move our pitifully small army around.
Embraer C-390 Millennium or Airbus A400M Atlas for movement plus a small amount of HSSV’s built by Austal, and following the US Marines in giving up heavy tanks would have been a better strategic fit in my opinion.
Navy certainly seems to have the Government in a tight grip at the moment.
My thoughts exactly.
You forget, these are manned by Army, not Navy. I think that the Army will struggle to man these and the LCMs. They do not have the corporate knowledge or experience to man these vessels. Eventually they will be handed over the Navy, in my opinion.
Good point.
Army have the capability but not the staff. Pitiful recruiting (8months to get simple medicals, stupid recruiting practices ( person wanting to join in one capability area is often redirected to somewhere they don’t want to go) and then arcane practices of separating families instead of keeping families together (the talent pool is largely around capital cities) imagine joing the navy in Melbourne and being told we don’t have navy here so you need to uproot your entire family to Sydney or Townsville!! It is like in the days of Nelson! Bring the bases to the population and it will be far simpler to recruit.
Couldn’t agree more. Thanks to the DSR we have reverted to an 18th century frontier fortress mentality.
The Balikpapan class were originally going to be manned by the army as well. But eventually they ended up under navy control. I suspect this may happen again with these vessels. To go from operating no ships to operating 8 ships near enough to 4000 tons each is a big ask.
The images I saw on a website regarding the design had FWD PORT and STBD 30mm Typhoons
These are indeed Landing Ships, what Birden,sorry Austal, are building as Landing craft Medium are closer to the Balikpapan Class LCH ,although somewhat bigger at 60mts ,Ironically to replace the LCM8 which is around 13 mts .
I’m dissapointed they didn’t choose to go the Sea Transport Solutions proposed Stern Landing Vessel. Can carry more weight at the same speed (600 tonnes at 15 knots), has a proven reliable propulsion system and is designed by an experienced Australian company.
Not sure why the LST100 needs it’s own landing vessels but at least the vehicle’s will be covered. Not a bad outcome but I think we are missing the opportunity to go with a more innovative and modern capability.
I wonder how much over budget they will be and how long the delay will be in getting these craft into service. Our military brass and the bureaucrats in DOD don’t have much success in staying on budget and delivery within agreed time lines. They still get their bonuses.
What I can’t understand is why W.A. Was chosen as the principle builder of just about every ship Australia builds. Don’t get me wrong ,Henderson is a world class operation but I would have assumed that spreading the ship builds around the Country would make more sense. Consolidating all ( except for Adelaide) the ship building capacity in one spot ( especially one that is the closest you can get to the perceived enemy) doesn’t make sense.
I think the only sensible approach is to let the shipbuilder / prime contractor make those decisions, not Defence.
The one thing I do not understand about this swing to be “littoral manoeuvre focussed” is that there’s never been any mention of getting any AFV assets for the Army.
It seems to me ,that with Australia’s small sized Army and moderate amount of equipment ,that these Landing Ships are some what of an over kill. At present the Navy operates, 2 27,000 + ton LHD, a 16,000 + LSD ( some what near its use by date) and both the replacement vessels for the LM8 and LCH are all well over size of the vessels they are replacing. Just seems odd that the greater majority of Maritime assets will be basically taxis . Perhaps the object is to support the USMC contingent in Littoral Warfare or will be used for Humanitarian aid in the Pacific.
Can’t help but feel the LSD might be heading for the chopping block. Plans to replace it with two JSS seem to have gone by the wayside and these LSTs might be the final nail in the coffin.