<\/p>\n
In a series of experiments at Camp Pendleton, the U.S. Marine Corps is testing out the capabilities of its novel new landing vessel, a heavily-modified OSV from the Gulf oil patch.<\/p>\n
The Marine Corps has chartered and converted the 20-year-old offshore supply vessel HOS Resolution<\/em> to try out a rarely-seen concept: stern-first beach landings. The idea has potential advantages, particularly in seakeeping, since the vessel gets to keep a conventional bow. Last year, a shipyard in Louisiana refitted HOS Resolution<\/em> with a folding stern ramp, two ramp support towers and four spuds for stationkeeping. When combined with heavy skegs, CPPs and a DP2 system, the vessel may well be the only member of a new class. <\/p>\n Courtesy USMC<\/em><\/p>\n Last weekend, teams from the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command and Marine Corps War Fighting Lab put the heavily-modified OSV through her paces. In an inner harbor, with calm conditions, the vessel's crew deployed the stern ramp and tested out loading and unloading military vehicles – both directly onto the beach and through the water. The team also tried launching a heavy unmanned aircraft from the deck of the HOS Resolution<\/em> to simulate an aerial payload delivery to shore. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n HOS Resolution <\/em>will deploy to Japan after testing in California and Hawaii, and two more OSV-based testbeds are coming soon, according to USNI. <\/p>\n Trials with the new design will inform the service's plans for its future shore-to-shore connector, the Landing Ship Medium, which it is co-developing with the U.S. Navy. The LSM is key to the USMC's strategy to disperse small combat groups of Marines on far-flung islands in the Pacific, where they could target enemy warships and aircraft. <\/p>\n LSM is one of several novel strategies that the Marine Corps is pursuing to solve its logistics problems in the Western Pacific. The service's top R&D officer said last year that its researchers are developing an autonomous, low-profile supply boat designed around Colombian drug-running semisubmersibles. <\/p>\n maritime-executive<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In a series of experiments at Camp Pendleton, the U.S. Marine Corps is testing out the capabilities of its novel new landing vessel, a heavily-modified OSV from the Gulf oil patch. The Marine Corps has chartered and converted the 20-year-old offshore supply vessel HOS Resolution to try out a rarely-seen concept: stern-first beach landings. The idea …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[7977,4220,4236,531,1131,1070,2089,549],"class_list":["post-39794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-maritime-news","tag-corps","tag-hos","tag-landing","tag-marine","tag-offshore","tag-ship","tag-turned","tag-vessel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/39795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.al-sindbad.net\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}