WASHINGTON — The Navy and Marine Corps have chosen a ship design by the Dutch company Damen as the basis for a number of new vessels to be part of the Medium Landing Ship program, senior leaders announced today in a video posted on X.
“As I announced last week, we are fundamentally reshaping how the Navy builds and fields its fleet,” Navy Secretary John Phelan said, referring to the video he shared Nov. 25 where he announced the cancellation of the Constellation-class. “Today, I’m taking the second major step in that effort, selecting the design for our Medium Landing Ship, an operationally-driven, fiscally-disciplined choice that puts capability in the fleet on a responsible timeline.”
Phelan said that he, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle and Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Eric Smith selected the LST-100 Landing Ship Transport, “a roughly 4000-ton ship with a range of more than 3,400 nautical miles. That gives us the right balance of capability, affordability and speed to field,” he said.
The Medium Landing Ship (LSM) has gone through several iterations since its inception back in the first draft of Force Design 2030 in 2019. In general, the vessel is envisioned to help shuttle Marines and their equipment through places like the island chains in the Indo-Pacific. The Marine Corps’ official requirement for LSM is 35 ships — that number represents what the service believes is an ideal fleet size, but not a guaranteed outcome pending annual shipbuilding budgets.
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“The Medium Landing Ships will enable our Marines to be more agile and flexible in austere environments where there are no ports providing the joint force the needed operational mobility within the adversary’s weapons engagement zone,” the commandant said in the video.
Last year, the Navy had to cancel an initial request for proposals associated with LSM when the responses were “simply unaffordable,” Caudle said in the video.
“We will competitively award a vessel construction manager to oversee the LSM program, drive execution and facilitate genuine competition among multiple shipyards,” Phelan added.
The video did not elaborate on how many shipyards will be tasked with building LSMs, but a spokesperson for the Navy told Breaking Defense the initial request for proposals for the vessel construction manager competition will be released in early 2026.
The spokesperson further said the service had secured the rights to a technical data package from Damen for the ship’s design for $3.2 million.
The spokesperson said contracts awarded to Bollinger Shipyards earlier this year secured the technical data package for their vessel design based on a US Army ship, but the Navy is not currently planning to build any LSMs based on that design.
A separate contract was awarded to Bollinger in September for advance procurement of long-lead time materials “and associated engineering and design activities to support whichever design was selected for the LSM program,” she added.
Updated 12/5/2025 at 4:16 p.m. ET with additional comments from a Navy spokesperson. This original version of this story incorrectly stated the purpose of a September contract to Bollinger Shipyards.