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China Launches First Type 075 Big Deck Amphibious Warship By: Xavier Vavasseur September 27, 2019 10:45 AM • Updated: September 27, 2019 11:21 AM China’s first amphibious assault ship, a Landing Helicopter Dock known as Type 075, was launched in Shanghai on Thursday. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN or Chinese Navy), the customer of the vessel, said in a statement that after a brief ceremony starting at 9:20 am at a CSSC’s Hudong-Zhonghua shipyard, waters began to be pumped into a dry dock in which the ship’s hull was built. Participants at the ceremony – officials from the central...

Though Russian officials have delayed plans to move forward with two of its major surface ship programs indefinitely, including a new aircraft carrier, the Kremlin insists it will move ahead with work on a modern amphibious assault ship. Despite assurances to the contrary, there is little evidence that the country’s shipbuilding infrastructure is anymore ready for this task, and the project could easily end up deferred in the face of other priorities. On June 4, 2017, Russia’s state-owned news outlet Sputnik reported that the Ministry of Defense had included the proposed Lavina-class amphibious assault ship in its up-coming modernization plan,...

PHOTO: HMAS Adelaide will no longer participate in planned Talisman Sabre exercises with the US. (ABC News: Billy Cooper) Engineers are still trying to identify what is causing problems with the "azimuth" propulsion system on board the $1.5 billion Landing Helicopter Docks (LHDs) HMAS Canberra and HMAS Adelaide. "It may well be a design issue," conceded Rear Admiral Adam Grunsell, the head of maritime systems in Defence's Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group. This week, HMAS Adelaide was placed into dry dock at the Garden Island naval base so the ship's propulsion pods could be removed for a thorough examination. The...

ROYAL Navy flagship HMS Ocean could soon be sailing under a different flag – as part of the Brazilian fleet. Defence chiefs have confirmed the 28,000-ton helicopter carrier is for up for sale and that they are in talks with foreign governments. Brazil’s naval chiefs are keen to buy the vessel, which has seen active service in the Iraq War and an SAS rescue operation in Sierra Leone. Its sale will leave the Royal Navy without a carrier of any kind until 2023, when HMS Queen Elizabeth becomes operational. Brazilian officials say they believe the asking price – a closely-guarded...

China has started building a new generation of large amphibious assault vessels that will strengthen the navy as it plays a more dominant role in projecting the nation’s power overseas, military sources said. The 075 Landing Helicopter Dock is now under construction by a Shanghai-based shipbuilding company, the sources said. The amphibious vessel is far larger than similar ships previously constructed for the PLA Navy. The 075 can serve as a form of aircraft carrier and military experts said it would give China’s navy the ability to launch various types of helicopters to attack naval vessels, enemy ground forces or...

France has delivered the first of a series of Mistral warships to Egypt, the Egyptian news website Al Ahram reported Thursday. The helicopter carriers were initially constructed for the Russian Navy, but France pulled out of the deal following Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea. France paid to Russia 950 million euro ($1 billion) as compensation for breaching the deal. The official ceremony was attended Egyptian Minister of Defence Sedki Sobhi, the commander of the French naval forces and other top military officials from France and Egypt. The warship was named after the former president of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser. A...

The first Mistral-class LHD Gamal Abdel Nasser (hull number L1010, the former Vladivostok initially intended for the Russian Navy), purchased by Egypt after the cancellation of the contract with Russia went out to sea for the first time with an Egyptian crew for a week of training. Egyptian Navy Mistral-class LHD Gamal Abdel Nasser sailing out of Saint-Nazaire with an Egyptian crew aboard for the first time. Picture taken on 06/05/2016. Source: www.facebook.com/EgyptMilitary 180 Egyptian Navy sailors are reported to be aboard the vessel. A second series of formation at sea is set to take place on the second half...

Huntington Ingalls Industries is in discussions with defense officials about potentially putting missile defense radars and laser weapons on San Antonio-class amphibious transport docks, a company executive said Jan. 13. “You can put a lot of additional weight on the ship and you can put … some modern technologies like ballistic missile defense radars that are very heavy,” Brian Cuccias, corporate vice president at HII and president of Ingalls Shipbuilding, told reporters on the sidelines of a Surface Navy Association symposium in Arlington, Virginia. “We think it’s a great idea.” The vessels, which are manufactured by the company, have design...

ISTANBUL — Turkey is getting ready to widen the reach of its military considerably by building a multipurpose aircraft carrier with “trans-continental” capabilities. The 225-meter ship dubbed the Anadolu (or Anatolia), set to enter service in 2021, is designed to take fighter aircraft, attack helicopters, tanks, troops, and landing vessels to areas around the Mediterranean and as far as the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans, officials say. While some analysts say Turkey needs a carrier like this, some regard the project as an expensive expression of prestige and grandeur that far exceeds the country’s limits. The move is a sign...

The first details on a future landing helicopter dock (LHD) amphibious assault ship for the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) may have emerged on a government website in China. Poster showing an LHD design on CSOC (China Shipbuilding & Offshore International Company) stand during AAD 2014 in South Africa An article published on an official website of the Shanghai communist party mentions a company, Hudong Heavy Machinery Co., LTD (member of CSSC China State Shipbuilding Corporation, the largest shipbuilding group in China) that has been contracted to built "16PC2-6B" diesel engines for a new project of amphibious assault ship. The...

Well, it's official now. Egypt is getting an aircraft carrier. FRENCH MISTRAL-CLASS WARSHIP. NEXT PORT OF CALL: EGYPT. IMAGE SOURCE: FRANCISCO GONZALEZ VIA FLICKR. Actually, two aircraft carriers. Earlier this month, we told you about Egypt's plans to buy both of the Mistral-class amphibious assault ships France had been trying to sell to Russia -- then refused to sell after Russia invaded Ukraine. At that time, France had only confirmed that Egypt presented one of multiple "serious options" for offloading its aircraft carriers. Other nations, including the United Arab Emirates and Canada had also expressed interest. But last week, the...

Egypt and Saudi Arabia are interested in buying two French Mistral warships that had been sold to Russia before Paris scrapped the deal, French media reported Friday, citing an official French source. "Egypt and Saudi Arabia are desperate to buy two Mistrals," an unnamed official French source told France’s leading daily, Le Monde. “King Salman of Saudi Arabia wants to build a fleet in Egypt which could project regional power in the Red Sea and Mediterranean," said the source. "Some countries in the region have displayed a marked interest in the Mistrals with the aim of establishing a [regional] maritime...

France has agreed to pay compensation to Russia for cancelling the sale of two warships, a Russian official says. France stopped the sale after the outbreak of the conflict in eastern Ukraine, where Russia is accused of backing separatist rebels. The Mistral contract was worth €1.2bn (£843m; $1.3bn). Russia made an advance payment of about €840m. The first of two helicopter carriers - the Vladivostok - was supposed to be delivered to Russia in November 2014. "The negotiations are completely finished, everything has already been decided, both the time-frame and the amount," said Vladimir Kozhin, an aide to Russian President...

At IDEF 2015, the International Defence Industry Fair currently held in Istanbul, Turkey, local shipyard "Sedef Shipbuilding" is showcasing a model of the future Turkish Navy Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) with the short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) variant of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II jets on board. The same model is showcased on the Turkish Navy booth. Turkish Navy future LHD model on display at Sedef Shipyard booth during IDEF 2015 Turkey's Undersecretariat for Defense Industries (SSM) announced in December 2013 that it selected Sedef shipyard as winner of its LPD tender and that final contract negotiations with...

France has revealed it is considering sinking two brand new state-of-the-art warships if a deal to sell them both to Russia collapses under pressure from America and the EU. The French government is supposed to have received a payment of €1.12 billion from Moscow for the vessels, but the transfer has been postponed amid tensions over the conflict in Ukraine. With questions raised over whether the agreement will ever be rekindled, it has now been claimed that France would rather scuttle the warships rather than pay to keep them operational. As it stands France looks set to lose hundreds of...

PARIS—France said it is weighing the option of giving Moscow a refund for a €1.2 billion ($1.29 billion) contract to supply the Russian navy with two warships, whose delivery has been put on hold amid the conflict in Ukraine. French President François Hollande said he would discuss the contract with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday in Armenia, where world leaders will gather to mark the 100th anniversary of the killing and forced deportation of more than 1.5 million ethnic Armenians. Mr. Hollande suspended the delivery of two Mistral class warships to Russia last fall after the U.S. and other...

A 24,000-ton helicopter carrier has formally entered the fleet of Japan’s Maritime Self Defense Force (JMSDF) on Wednesday making the ship the largest warship Japan has fielded since the close of World War II. The commissioning ceremony JS Izumo (DDH-183) — the first of two for the JMSDF — was held in Yokohama and attended by Defense Minister Gen Nakatani. Billed by the Japanese as a platform to assist in anti-submarine warfare (ASW) and humanitarian aid and disaster relief (HADR) operations, the ship has flared regional tensions in neighbors— China especially — who view the ship as a power projection...

India is on its way to indigenously build four warships, which will be the biggest-ever made in the country other than the under-construction 40,000 tonne sea-borne aircraft carrier the INS Vikrant. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) had re-issued a request for proposal (RFP) to Indian private sector shipyards in September to build four amphibious assault ships, also called the Landing Platform Docks (LPD) in naval parlance. Each of these will approximately cost Rs 6,000 crore and are expected to deliver over the next 10 years. Each of these ships will be anything between 35,000 and 40,000 tonnes. The Indian shipyards...

The first of two 27,000-ton amphibious warships was commissioned into the Royal Australian Navy on Friday, according to information from the service. HMAS Canberra (L-02) entered the RAN fleet on Friday during a ceremony at the service’s Fleet Base East in Sydney. Canberra and sister ship HMAS Adelaide will be the two largest ships in RAN history as part of about a $2.5 billion (USD) shipbuilding program. The ship’s design is based on a Spanish amphibious assault ship Juan Carlo I and built and designed by Spanish shipbuilder Navantia and BAE Systems Australia. The pair will be the first ships...

THOUSANDS of mattresses, pillows and doonas, tonnes of food and water and 400 sailors, soldiers and air force personnel have been installed on the navy’s newest and biggest ship — the 27,800-tonne HMAS Canberra. Known as a Landing Helicopter Dock or LHD — the $1.5 billion warship will be commissioned into service with the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and handed over to Navy Chief Vice-Admiral Tim Barrett at Garden Island in Sydney on Friday November 28. The crew of Nuship Canberra (she actually becomes HMAS Canberra at commissioning) have spent the past 18 months training on advanced land based simulators...