The Ship Model Forum

A Royal Navy FLO-FLO

A few thoughts on the utility of the US Expeditionary Transfer Dock and its potential for the UK, expanding into other roles as part of a wider discussion.


The US sea basing concept envisaged a far offshore collection of logistics and combat vessels that could deliver forces and all their sustainment needs directly to the objective without needing to build up stores at a beach location or operate in vulnerable areas close to shore. The sea base would eliminate the need to organise, redistribute and repack supplies onshore, and palletise what was needed, to order, all whilst afloat. Technical challenges included asset visibility in the deployed logistics management system, ship to ship transfer of stores and vehicles in high sea states and very high fuel usage rates for the high speed connectors (LCAC, CH-53K and V-22). The planning requirement for a 14,000 thousand strong Marine Expeditionary Brigade (MEB) is just under a thousand tonnes per day and even with the excess of airlift available to the US forces it was not deemed practical at distances greater than 60 nautical miles offshore.

It is important to recognise that this was not for the assault phase but in order to provide the throughput required to sustain the ashore force at the stand-off distances envisaged, the only sensible option was a high speed surface connector, the LCAC hovercraft. Neither is it used with amphibious assault shipping, instead, the landing platform is used with logistics vessels, the Large Medium Speed Roll On Roll Off (LMSR) for example. If it were to be contextualised in UK terms, it would be one of the Point ‘class’ strategic RORO vessels.

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