The U.S. Navy accepted supply of the following era touchdown craft, Ship to Shore Connector (SSC), Touchdown Craft, Air Cushion (LCAC) 104, June 9. LCAC 104’s supply follows the completion of Acceptance Trials with the Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey to check the readiness and functionality of the craft and to validate necessities. LCACs are constructed with comparable configurations, dimensions, and clearances to the legacy LCAC, guaranteeing the compatibility of this next-generation air cushion automobile with current effectively deck-equipped amphibious ships.
“These subsequent era craft present our Navy and Marine Corps workforce with important agility and pace to finish their missions,” mentioned Capt. Jason Grabelle, program supervisor, Amphibious Assault and Connectors Applications, Program Government Workplace (PEO) Ships. “The reliability and suppleness of the LCAC make them an important asset to the fleet – defending the maritime area now and sooner or later.”
Commercial
The Ship-to-Shore Connector (SSC), also referred to as the LCAC 100 class, is a system proposed by the US Navy as a substitute for the Touchdown Craft Air Cushion (LCAC). Though the design might be broadly much like the LCAC, there might be a number of important variations:two-person fly-by-wire cockpit with joystick controls, extra highly effective, extra environment friendly engines, intensive use of composites and aluminum alloys for corrosion resistance and dvanced skirt as a substitute of a deep skirt for much less drag and lowered craft weight.
It is going to provide an elevated capability to deal with the rising weight of apparatus utilized by the US Military and Marine Corps. The Touchdown Craft Air Cushion (LCAC) program is presently in serial manufacturing on LCACs 105 – 116 at Textron Methods. The SSC has a designed lifetime of 30 years. The tenth SSC to be delivered may have the aptitude to launch automobiles into the water fairly than journey to the seashore. That capacity will then be retrofitted to the earlier 9 vessels.
