As the largest warships ever commissioned in to the Royal Australian Navy, the 27,000-tonne Landing Helicopter Dock amphibious assault ships HMAS Canberra and NUSHIP Adelaide are rewriting the book on force projection ability for the ADF.
Philip Smart | Cadiz
But while the ships themselves have had the lion’s share of attention, much of their ability to put an Australian force ashore in areas with little or no infrastructure will depend on a dozen of the smallest vessels ever to join the fleet. Each LHD will field four fast LHD Landing Craft, or “LLCs”, with another four for training and maintenance rotation.
At around 59 tonnes empty and 113 tonnes loaded, 23 metres long and 6.4 wide (as long as a tennis court and just over half as wide), the Spanish-built Navantia LCM-1E LLCs are the vital bridge between ship and shore. While the LHD’s helicopter deck may be the initial means of putting armed Australians ashore, it will be the LLCs that deliver the vehicles and materiel Army needs to maintain a force, up to and including (under specific conditions) the 65-tonne M1A1 Abrams tank.
Eight of Australia’s 12 have already been delivered in two batches and recently docked with HMAS Canberra for the first time. The final four-vessel group is completing sea trials at Navantia’s facility in the Spanish seaport of Cadiz and will be shipped in late July for a September/October arrival in Sydney, on budget and about three months ahead of the original schedule.
ADM’s experience of a section of landing craft L4411’s Cadiz sea trials was an exercise in contrast – one of the world’s youngest military vessels motoring around one of its oldest and most historic harbours. Sited on the southwest Atlantic coast, Cadiz is the oldest continuously inhabited city in Spain and one of the oldest in Western Europe.
With a reputation for constant wind it was a Phoenician trading port and later home to the Spanish Navy from the Bourbon empire of the 18th Century. Spain has built warships there since 1736 and at Navantia’s San Fernando shipyard Australia’s last four landing craft were tied up next to a working dry dock built in 1788, its bulbous shape reflecting the lines of the classic Spanish galleon.
"The LCM-1E’s acquisition under Joint Project JP2048 Phase 3 was pragmatic."
The four-hour morning trials session began with a short hop across the canal from Navantia’s shipyard to load a 50-tonne Spanish Marines M-60 main battle tank. This was followed by high-power runs across the harbour on one and both engines, handling tests, compass swinging and navigation checks, all conducted under the watchful eye of a team of Navantia engineers and two Australian Defence Materiel Organisation representatives, both experienced landing craft operators.
Every part of the landing craft’s design has been subjected to punishing tests, from running the engines at high power for extended periods while nosed in to a beach to ensure their cooling systems could cope, to repeatedly raising and lowering the hydraulically powered landing ramp with a two-tonne weight attached. Hundreds of test points have exercised and approved both the vessels’ primary systems and their fail-safes and backups.
The LCM-1E’s acquisition under Joint Project JP2048 Phase 3 was pragmatic. Spain designed the vessel to replace the same US-designed LCM-8 landing craft it will replace in Australian service. It’s already a mature platform; the Spanish Navy, the Armada, which conducted amphibious operations for nearly a century, tested two prototypes for five years from 2001, with changes incorporated in to 12 more delivered by 2006 and 2007. And as a modified version of the Navantia-built Spanish Juan Carlos class vessel, Australia’s Canberra class LHD well deck was designed to take Navantia’s landing craft.
Australia’s LLCs are only slightly modified, adding a transducer to power an echo-sounder, a toilet modification to ensure waste security in the Great Barrier Reef and other protected areas, and Lloyds Certification.
On of the eight LLCs already in Australia operating in HMAS Canberra's well dock during First of Class Flight Trials at sea off the east Australian coast. Credit: Defence
The days of landing craft spearheading D-Day style invasions under heavy fire are long gone; today’s crews will only operate in areas already secured by other forces. Although the Navantia design includes two weapons mounting stations strengthened for heavy machine guns, the focus has been on building the world’s most efficient waterborne delivery truck.
Navantia started with a clean sheet of paper to replace the LCM-8, investigating aluminium and composite hull construction before settling on high-grade steel to survive the inevitable knocks and scrapes of amphibious operations. When grounded the flat-bottomed hull is designed to rest on three points for tripod stability, and strong enough to allow heavy vehicle loading when sitting in the LHD’s dry well deck.
The all-important forward ramp is designed to flex to distribute load and has a circular hole in the centre that can mate with a pin on the lowered rear cargo ramp of another LLC to lock them together, enabling loaders to drive vehicles across one LLC to load the one behind in an LHD’s dry well deck.
Navantia also doubled the power. Two 800kW diesels drive independently steerable waterjets, giving the LLC nimble handling in tight spaces, including the ability to crab sideways when docking. Cooling the powerful engines in a confined space below deck was one of Navantia’s more time-consuming challenges, solved through a soon to be patented system of heat exchangers, valves and drainers that take sea water in through the sides and stern of the craft to avoid beaching damage and sand ingress.
Combined with use of weight-saving composites and a hull designed to plane over the sea’s surface, this powerplant delivers the LLC’s game-changing speed; 22 knots unloaded, 15 knots with an average load and 12 fully loaded. This is almost twice as fast as the LCM-8 it replaces.
With its payload defined by space and weight, the LLC can alternately carry a single main battle tank, two armoured vehicles, six Humvee-sized vehicles or 170 personnel. Add that all up and the result, as explained by Navantia Program Manager Jose Jimenez-Alfaro, is personnel and materiel relocated from ship to shore in as little as a third of the time taken with the older craft.
“We did an exercise early on with a number of vehicles being projected to the shore,” he explained to ADM. “It was an M-60 Main Battle Tank, two Bushmaster armoured vehicles, two trucks, six Hummers and a company, 170 people fully armed. Under our exercise conditions an LCM-8 would take 67 hours to do that. With our design it took only 19 hours.”
The LLC project seems set to present a welcome on-budget, early delivery of an asset that will achieve its original performance goals with little risk. While Jiminez-Alfaro believes that stems from Australia’s decision to acquire a proven design, he also credits a robust, effective working relationship between the Spanish and Australian teams for delivering the outcome.
“Our approach has been simple” he said. “If there is a problem we tell the customer and then work it out together. It is two-way. We’ve found the same understanding and the same approach from the other side, which is good for the program.”
Note: Philip Smart travelled to Cadiz as a guest of Navantia.