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A Unique Landing Craft Concept (Source: French Direction Générale de l’Armement; issued Jan. 12, 2011) (Issued in French only; unofficial translation by defense-aerospace.com) French companies often are a source of initiative and ingenuity, and the L-CAT prototype imagined, designed and built on its own money by CNIM (société de Construction industrielles de la Méditerranée), a small company based in south-eastern France. This prototype vessel has the twin hulls of a catamaran, but its central platform, resembling an elevator, can be raised or lowered, thus transforming the L-CAT from a catamaran to flat-bottomed landing craft, and back again. The design, with...