Australia — Second amphibious ship landing helicopter dock launched

Chief of Navy, Vice Admi­ral Ray Grig­gs has attend­ed the launch of the sec­ond land­ing heli­copter dock (LHD) at the Navan­tia ship­yard in Spain.

The sec­ond amphibi­ous ship land­ing heli­copter dock is launched four months ahead of sched­ule from the Navan­tia ship­yard in Spain. Source: Aus­tralian Depart­ment of Defence Click to enlarge

Here you can find more infor­ma­tion about:  The Aus­tralian Defense Indus­try – Mar­ket Oppor­tu­ni­ties and Entry Strate­gies, Analy­ses and Fore­casts to 2016 Aus­tralia — Defense Expen­di­ture to 2015 — Mar­ket Siz­ing and Fore­casts: Mar­ket Pro­file — GlobalDefence.net — Defence Studies Home­land Secu­ri­ty Expen­di­ture in Aus­tralia to 2016: Mar­ket Review

Aus­tralia is acquir­ing two amphibi­ous ships for the Aus­tralian Defence Force (ADF).

The LHDs are the largest ships ever built for the Roy­al Aus­tralian Navy and will pro­vide the ADF with one of the most capa­ble and sophis­ti­cat­ed amphibi­ous deploy­ment sys­tems in the world. 

The Can­ber­ra Class LHDs are big­ger than Australia’s last air­craft car­ri­er HMAS Mel­bourne, and when com­plet­ed will be more than 230 metres long, 27.5 metres high and weigh around 27,500 tonnes. 

Each ship can car­ry a com­bined armed bat­tle­group of more than 1100 per­son­nel, 100 armoured vehi­cles and 12 heli­copters and fea­tures a 40-bed hospital. 

Span­ish ship­builder Navan­tia, as a sub­con­trac­tor to BAE Sys­tems Aus­tralia, has con­struct­ed and is fit­ting out the hulls of both amphibi­ous ships. 

The super­struc­ture, com­bat and com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tems will be con­sol­i­dat­ed with the hulls in Aus­tralia at the BAE Sys­tems ship­yard in Williamstown, Victoria. 

The arrival of the first amphibi­ous ship hull at BAE’s Williamstown dock­yard is expect­ed lat­er this year. 

When the hull arrives in Mel­bourne the com­plex task of mar­ry­ing the super­struc­ture, hull, com­bat sys­tem and com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tem can com­mence, in prepa­ra­tion for deliv­ery of the first ship to the Aus­tralian Defence Force in 2014. 

Press release
Min­is­te­r­i­al Sup­port and Pub­lic Affairs,
Depart­ment of Defence,
Can­ber­ra, Australia