Foreign Military Issue: France's Landing Craft
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Just saw a new French equipment that can ferry heavy tanks from ship to shore.
Real cool - waterjets, fast catamaran and can carry heavy tanks because can carry more than 100T. Maybe even Leo2.
See photo below, can even do ramp to ramp! Wow!
Tuesday, 24 February, 2009
The French Navy has begun an evaluation of a novel variable-draught landing craft, known as the L-Cat, to assess its suitability as a potential future expeditionary watercraft.
Constructions Industrielles de la Meditérranée (CNIM), located in Hall 7, Stand B31, has funded the construction of the full-scale L-Cat demonstrator, built by the Gemelin shipyard in La Rochelle, France. The design is intended to meet operational requirements for a fast shipto-shore connector, combining the attributes of a deep draught vessel and a landing craft to offer high speed, excellent manoeuvrability and increased payload.
The L-Cat concept achieves this by giving the flexibility to raise or lower a pontoon deck to enable operation in any one of three modes. In transit the L-Cat is a catamaran; the pontoon deck is raised between the two hulls. In beaching mode, the pontoon is lowered and in dock mode the platform is totally or partially flooded.
CNIM says that while the L-Cat concept is innovative, the underpinning technologies are low risk: the hull adopts standard naval architecture ratios and aluminium alloy structures; the propulsion system uses standard diesel engines and waterjets; and the hydraulic lifting rams are based on proven technology. The detailed design and build of the L-Cat prototype have been privately funded by CNIM.
The demonstrator vessel is a baseline 30m, 300-tonne displacement L-Cat design of aluminium construction, capable of speeds of 20kt at its maximum 110-tonne design payload. Draught, fully loaded in catamaran mode, is 2.5m. The French Navy began trialling the L-Cat in December 2008.
An evaluation with the multipurpose amphibious ship Mistral was conducted in mid-February, during which the L-Cat berthed in the ship’s stern dock and performed ramp-to-ramp vehicle transfers. Feedback from the French Navy has been extremely positive, according to CNIM. Further trials, using Foudreclass and Mistral-class amphibious ships, are planned.
L-Cat landing craft prototype runs naval trials
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