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LCU NEWCON 2021

At the Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding in Shanghai, a new landing craft was spotted in July 2021. It seemed to be designed to be placed in the docking chamber of the Project 075 universal landing craft. The previous generation of PLA LCUs, represented mostly by Type 066 to 069 family of craft dating back to 1950s, is by now completely antiquated. In contrast, this new design applies modern principles, notably offset bridge to allow roll on/roll off operations.

Amphibious landing operations have been developing for decades since World War II, and have gradually evolved into trans-horizon landings, emphasizing the use of sea and air forces to jointly conduct multi-point, multi-directional and multi-channel landings, with particular emphasis on assault methods such as parachute landing and air landing. However, under this new tactical thinking, the traditional beachhead landing is not completely abandoned, but has become one of the diversified landing methods. In addition to amphibious combat vehicles and large hovercraft, traditional landing craft are indispensable for beach landing. The appearance in mid-2021 of a new domestic mechanized landing craft shows that Xhina had not relaxed in this regard.

One of the primary military purposes of beachable marine vehicles is to transport cargo such as vehicles and troops from ships at sea to beachheads. These beachable marine vehicles also have commercial application where they may transport cargo to unimproved beach areas. The U.S. Navy has workhorse vessels for this purpose such as the LCU (Landing Craft Utility) and related marine vehicles. The LCU is an almost flat bottomed monohull which is necessary so that it can drive on and off of beachheads; however, this design makes the LCU and its brethren very uncomfortable in rough seas. A further and most significant shortcoming of the LCU is that it has limited speed capabilities. In the cast of the LCU, the loaded top speed is only 9 12 knots.

Shallow-draft vessels are often designed with flat bottom hulls to provide the ability to navigate in relatively shallow waters, such as in shallow-water harbors, along rivers, along shorelines and in other bodies of shallow water. Shallow-draft vessels are also designed to maximize payload carrying capacity and to provide for simplified on-loading and off-loading of cargo. Examples of shallow-draft vessels include landing craft mechanized (LCM) and landing craft utility (LCU) that are often used by amphibious military forces to transport equipment and troops from sea to beachheads and/or to piers.v Shallow-draft vessels typically have relatively high water resistance due in part to large beam to length ratios, large wetted surfaces, and blunt water contact. Such characteristics provide for the generation of large amounts of resistance, such as turbulence and/or Kelvin wake, and high power requirements. Accordingly, shallow-draft vessels typically have poor seakeeping, poor ride, and poor handling characteristics. Due to these and other operational characteristics, shallow-draft vessels typically are not suited for use in deep water.

A more recent development than the LCU is the LCAC (Landing Craft Air Cushion). The LCAC is a SES (Surface Effect Ship), also known as a hovercraft, with a pressurized air cushion that supports the full vehicle weight. The LCAC has a flat cargo deck with a blower pressurized air cushion underneath that is surrounded by 360 degrees of flexible skirts or seals. As such, the LCAC can run up onto beaches with limited slopes and is therefore fully amphibious. The LCAC has speed capabilities in the 45 knot area but has very limited rough sea capabilities. Further, the gas turbine powered LCAC is very expensive to start with, has a high fuel burn rate, and its flexible full perimeter skirts are high maintenance and expensive to replace.

From the appearance point of view, the new landing craft is somewhat similar to the previous Type 074A LSM Yuhai / Yubei landing craft, but there is still a big difference. The more obvious one is that the bow landing method of the ship did not adopt the double-section folding suspension bridge type, but adopted the springboard type. In contrast, the suspension bridge design can be deployed during the voyage, allowing the combat boats or vehicles to pass through a short wading area directly onto the beach, or of course, it can also be deployed directly on the beach.

The springboard-style first door of this new landing ship must be used completely close to the beachhead. The advantage is that the heavy springboard allows large vehicles to drive directly onto the firmer surface of the beachhead. It is not difficult to see that the new type of mechanized landing craft may be equipped with heavy armored vehicles that cannot be waded, or equipped with transport vehicles. Before building a simple dock or acquiring a fixed dock, this type of landing craft can effectively unload a large number of vehicles that cannot wade.

In addition, this landing craft still uses the 074A type through deck design, so that the loading and unloading and carrying capacity have been greatly improved. This design is currently seldom used in landing craft except for amphibious assault ships. Initially, it seemed that domestic landing crafts are beginning to adopt this design in large numbers.

However, just from the picture, the new amphibious landing ship does not seem to have a large hull, and the deck area is also small. In comparison, the Type 074A can transport 3 Type 96, or one platoon of Type 59, and a reinforced platoon of 70 infantry, or 6 Type 63 amphibious tanks, or 3 medium-caliber field guns, or 6 Infantry fighting vehicles, or 250 heavily armed soldiers, etc. The new mechanical landing craft can only carry 1-2 medium tanks or 2 trucks at most. It is guessed that it may be mainly used for small vehicles and matching infantry, such as the light compound battalion of the Dongfeng Mengshigao motor vehicle family.

In addition, the landing craft is also very similar to the American LCU general purpose landing craft. The equipment has been used since World War II. It has a maximum transport capacity of 170 tons and can carry infantry and armored vehicles directly on the beach. This point can be said to be quite close to the purpose of the new domestic amphibious landing craft.

In terms of actual tactics, this kind of small landing craft has poor independent navigation capability. It is mainly loaded inside large landing craft, such as domestic integrated landing craft or amphibious landing craft. In addition to being directly launched in the flooded bay, Amphibious armored vehicles can also be loaded with Mustang-type hovercraft or landing craft of this type. This is mainly determined by the actual situation of landing on the beach and the equipment carried. The emergence of this new type of landing craft will undoubtedly give amphibious landing craft an additional choice, and it will be more diversified in terms of tactics.

In general, this new domestically-made mechanized landing craft is not high-tech equipment. However, the so-called amphibious landing operations rely on the accumulation of a large number of ordinary equipment, from quantitative to qualitative changes. These seemingly ordinary equipment is not only the last mile of amphibious operations from sea to land, but also the key to the success or failure of landing operations.

The Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) conducted landing drills featuring a new type of utility landing craft in the East China Sea, with observers saying on 24 February 2022 that this kind of craft can carry armored vehicles and troops, and complement air cushioned landing craft in large-scale landing missions. A large landing ship and two utility landing craft affiliated with a landing ship detachment attached to the PLA Eastern Theater Command Navy conducted an integration training for amphibious landing mission in an undisclosed region in the East China Sea, the PLA Eastern Theater Command announced. The drills put the small landing craft's realistic scenario combat capabilities to test by practicing multiple courses over a long distance and time, the command said, noting that this enhanced the force's ability to win battles. The craft seems like a new one, observers said, citing photos attached to the Sina Weibo post, which did not give further details. While the specifications of the new landing craft remain unknown, utility landing craft are generally used to carry tanks, armored vehicles, troops and equipment from larger landing ships to beaches or ports in amphibious landing missions, a military expert who requested anonymity told the Global Times. Compared to air cushioned landing craft, which can land on tougher terrain, utility landing craft have higher requirements for landing grounds, but they are often cost-friendlier than air cushioned landing craft, meaning that more can be produced, the expert said. Both types of craft can play important roles in large-scale landing missions, the expert said.