Stern Landing Vessel ready to take on littoral manoeuvre challenge

An Australian Stern Landing Vessel (SLV) designed by Gold Coast-based Sea Transport Pty Limited is positioning itself to act as the heavy lift component of the Australian Army’s greatly enhanced littoral manoeuvre capabilities under Project LAND8710 Ph.2. This will replace the RAN’s eight Balikpapan-class Landing Craft Heavy (LCH)

A prototype of the company’s 71 metre, all-steel SLV is in an advanced stage of construction at a commercial shipyard in Indonesia and will be available for charter or lease by either commercial or military customers as a demonstrator and trials vessel. The vessel should be in the water early in 2024.

The SLV represents a step-change in large landing craft design and performance compared to traditional bow ramp landing craft that have changed little since World War Two. The SLV features a ship-shape bow that enables it to undertake true blue water transits at higher speeds with better seakeeping and much longer ranges. The vessel will turn through 180 degrees and discharge troops, vehicles and equipment through a stern ramp over the beach.

It uses diesel-electric propulsion and is propelled by azimuth thrusters with a bow thruster for low-speed manoeuvrability, but Sea Transport has not released details of how the system works, saying it is protected IP. Maximum speed is in the 16-20kt range.

Sea Transport is a 100% Australian owned and operated naval architecture and marine engineering company. The SLV design, says CEO Kieran Carvill, is proven in commercial service around Australia and the Indo-Pacific, and enjoys lower acquisition and through-life costs.

“This means greater numbers of SLVs can be built in a shorter time, allowing introduction of the capability sought by Project LAND 8710 Phase 2 to be accelerated,” he said.

If selected by the ADF, he said, sovereignty requirements could mean the SLV is built in Australia. The company has been talking to potential partners in Australia but Carvill told EX² he is unable to name them. The SLV can be built readily at any number of mid-to-large shipyards in Australia and abroad, he says.

The ADF need is estimated to be 8-12 craft, but until the RFT is released it’s impossible to say. No date has been announced for the tendering process to begin and it’s not clear whether, as the Defence Strategic Review (DSR) suggests, LAND8710 Ph.2 will be an Army project or an RAN one as the vessel selected will be blue-water-capable.

The SLV is a clear category leader in capacity, the company says, with a 550-tonne payload carried on a 560 m² cargo deck. This enables the SLV to transport a wide variety of combat force packages consistent with DSR guidance, such as 18 Bushmasters or 18 HIMARS or eight M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks. Loads representative of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations would include six HX77 8×8 trucks, three 40M 4×4 trucks, a pair of backhoe loaders and one bulldozer – all carried by a single SLV.