General Dynamics NASSCO Marks Keel Laying of First Mobile Landing Platform Ship

SAN DIEGO – Today Gen­er­al Dynam­ics NASSCO host­ed a keel lay­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the first Mobile Land­ing Plat­form (MLP) ship at the company’s ship­yard in San Diego. Mrs. Pat Mills was the hon­oree for the cer­e­mo­ny. She is the wife of U.S. Marine Corps Lieu­tenant Gen­er­al Richard P. Mills, Deputy Com­man­dant for Com­bat Devel­op­ment and Integration. 

Mrs. Mills val­i­dat­ed the keel lay­ing by weld­ing her ini­tials into the ship’s struc­ture. The steel plate with her ini­tials will be per­ma­nent­ly affixed to the ship’s keel, remain­ing with the ves­sel through­out its time in service. 

Deliv­ery of the first MLP ship is sched­uled for May 2013. The 765-foot long ship will be used as stag­ing areas for the Navy and Marines. Sec­re­tary of the Navy Ray Mabus recent­ly announced that this first MLP ship will be named Mont­ford Point, for the North Car­oli­na facil­i­ty where 20,000 African Amer­i­can Marines were trained over sev­en years, start­ing in 1942. 

“In today’s chal­leng­ing fis­cal envi­ron­ment shipbuilder’s must con­tin­ue to pro­vide our Navy cus­tomer with com­pet­i­tive pric­ing and fair val­ue,” said Fred Har­ris, pres­i­dent of Gen­er­al Dynam­ics NASSCO. “With the Mobile Land­ing Plat­form, NASSCO is meet­ing that chal­lenge once again. The Navy and Marines will be get­ting a ship with sig­nif­i­cant capa­bil­i­ty at approx­i­mate­ly one-third the cost of the Navy’s orig­i­nal plan.” 

One ini­tia­tive that NASSCO employed with this ship was to incor­po­rate a “design-build” approach into all phas­es of design and plan­ning devel­op­ment. The “design-build” approach includ­ed the assign­ment of the company’s most expe­ri­enced ship­builders with­in func­tion­al engi­neer­ing and detail design teams. These teams played an impor­tant role in devel­op­ing build strat­e­gy ini­tia­tives that are improv­ing the ship’s readi­ness for con­struc­tion, mak­ing MLP among the most pro­ducible designs in NASSCO’s history. 

Once deliv­ered to the fleet, MLP ships will join the three Mar­itime Prepo­si­tion­ing Force squadrons that are strate­gi­cal­ly locat­ed around the world to enable rapid response in a cri­sis. MLP ves­sels will change the way the Mar­itime Prepo­si­tion­ing Force oper­ates, pro­vid­ing a “pier at sea,” that will become the core of the Navy/Marine Corps sea bas­ing con­cept. This capa­bil­i­ty will allow prepo­si­tion­ing ships to offload equip­ment and sup­plies to the MLP for trans­ship­ment to shore by oth­er vessels. 

Addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion on Gen­er­al Dynam­ics NASSCO can be found at www.nassco.com.

Source:
Gen­er­al Dynamics 

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