America Sets Sail: New Amphib, LHA-6, Leaves Shipyard

After five years in the shipyard, the first of a new class of Navy amphibious warship set sail today from its Pascagoula, Miss. birthsite for San Francisco, headed for the fleet. LHA-6 will be commissioned as the USS America this October.

America has been controversial in the military and on this website. I’ve argued the LHA-6 is a dead end in naval design, because in order to carry more aircraft — MV-22 Osprey tiltrotors, F-35B Joint Strike Fighter jump-jets — it sacrifices the well deck required to launch landing craft and amtracs, which sort of takes the “amphibious” out of “amphibious warship.” Regular contributor and recognized expert Robbin Laird has argued that the class’s increased airpower is well worth the trade-off and makes it invaluable for missions like 2011’s raids on Libya, which were launched by amphibs in absence of a full-sized aircraft carrier.

Who’s right? Maybe both of us. The Navy is building only one more ship to the exact LHA-6 design, the still-under-construction USS Tripoli (price: $2.4 billion). After that, they’re putting back the well deck — but they’re incorporating other features from the America design to increase the capacity for aircraft, too.

Regardless, the America remains an impressive feat of engineering and an important addition to the Navy-Marine Corps amphibious fleet, a unique and sometimes underappreciated national asset. So, as an antidote to all the airplane porn pouring out of the Farnborough International Airshow, we thought we’d greet the weekend with some ship pics of LHA-6 leaving its shipyard home for the wider world. Photos are all courtesy of America‘s manufacturer, leading amphib builder Huntington-Ingalls Industries.