Navy Light Amphibious Warship (LAW) Program Background and Issues for Congress

The Navy's new Light Amphibious Warship (LAW) program envisions procuring a class of 28 to 30 new amphibious ships to support the Marine Corps, particularly in implementing a new Marine Corps operational concept called Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO). The Navy's proposed FY2021 budget requests $30 million in research and development funding for initial industry studies and concept design work on the ship. The Navy envisions procuring the ships on an expedited schedule, with the first LAWs potentially being procured in FY2023 and a total of 28 notionally being procured by FY2026.The EABO concept was developed with an eye toward potential conflict scenarios with China in the Western Pacific. Underthe concept, the Marine Corps envisions, among other things, having reinforced-platoon-sized Marine Corps units maneuveraround the theater, moving from island to island, to fire anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs) and perform other missions so asto contribute, alongside Navy and other U.S. military forces, to U.S. operations to counter and deny sea control to Chineseforces. The LAW ships would be instrumental to these operations, with LAWs embarking, transporting, landing, andsubsequently reembarking these small Marine Corps units.As conceived by the Navy and Marine Corps, LAWs would be much smaller and individually much less expensive to procureand operate than the Navy's current amphibious ships. The Navy wants LAWs to be 200 to 400 feet in length, and to have aunit procurement cost of $100 million to $130 million.The LAW as outlined by the Navy is small enough that it could be built by any of several U.S. shipyards. The Navy statesthat in response to an initial request for information (RFI) about the LAW, it received responses from 13 firms, includingnine shipyards. The Navy's baseline preference is to have a single shipyard build all 28 to 30 ships, but the Navy is open tohaving them built in multiple yards to the same design if doing so could permit the program to be implemented more quickly and/or less expensively.