The Navy is getting a few new ships, and they are awesomely awesome.

LPD stands for Landing Platform Dock. The ships are really ATDs or Amphibious Transport Docks, but the old acronym stuck. These ships are also referred to as San Antonio class ships, named after the U.S.S. San Antonio, which was the first ship of this type.

Part of what makes these new ships so cool is that each one new ship can replace the functions of 3 old ships. This allows the Navy to decrease the number of ships they need to operate, while also increasing capability.

These ships are support ships. Their primary mission is to transport Marines and their gear to where they need to go. As such, the ships contain several large transport hovercrafts, 4 helicopters, and a crap load of Humvees. They also contain over 800 Marines.

As I mentioned in the Radar Post, the LPDs are also very stealthy. They don’t have a right angle anyhwere on the deck. The result of this is that the huge war ship looks like a small fishing boat to radar.

The New York (which isn’t quite finished yet) is an LPD. Part of the bow of the New York was made from salvaged steel from the World Trade Center.

We were supposed to get 12 of these new ships, which would replace 41 older ships that are being retired. However, since the world loves us now and we don’t have any need for a Navy, they will only be making 9 of the 12 ships that were originally planned.

Source: Science Channel, US Navy