GC-built amphib gaining experience

About 1,500 Sailors and Marines have been busily testing the capabilities of the Navy’s newest amphibious assault ship during a two-month transit, after leaving its Pascagoula, Miss., shipyard in July. USS America (LHA 6) is traveling and stopping along the way around the tip of South America, while headed to its California homeport. Sailors and Marines have engaged with allies in Colombia, Brazil, Chile and Peru. Ship CO Capt. Robert Hall Jr. requested Marines from Special-Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force South tag along with four MV-22B Ospreys. There’s not a lot of Navy-MC experience with Ospreys. But America doesn’t have a well-deck; yet, built for Marine aviation’s Ospreys and vertical takeoff and landing F-35B Joint Strike Fighters. Not having a well deck has made Sailors think differently, said Rear Adm. Fernandez “Frank” Ponds, commander of Expeditionary Strike Group 3. It symbolizes a new era in the “blue-green partnership” and is a “tremendous asset that gives a commander utility to do things that could’ve never been done before,” Ponds said. America is an “air-centric platform” resembling a “mini-Marine Corps aircraft carrier,” said Gen. John Kelly, head of the U.S. Southern Command, headquartered in Tampa, Fla. After the second America-class, future Navy amphibs will be built with well decks. (Source: Marine Corps Times, 09/07/14)