As Congress begins to consider the FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), there is no greater debate regarding naval shipbuilding than the one that surrounds the future of the Navy’s amphibious force writ large and the San Antonio-class Landing Platform Dock (LPD) ships in particular. Some voices argue that the LPDs, due to increasing costs, must be cut down in terms of their complexity and size, or the time and money allocated to build them be stretched out to diminish their impact upon the shipbuilding budget. We disagree with both approaches and argue that, for a number of reasons, LPD construction needs to end altogether.
The first reason is that the United States Marine Corps has been locked into an amphibious-assault strategy as its raison d’etre for far too long and needs to move on if it is to survive and remain relevant as an institution and operational military force. The simple fact is that the Marine Corps has not performed an amphibious assault against an opposed beach since the landing at Inchon 73 years ago, and modern technology renders it doubtful that the Corps will ever do so again.
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