U.S. Navy Accelerates 35-Ship Medium Landing Ship Program for Indo-Pacific Operations.

The U.S. Navy, on 18 February 2026, issued a Request for Proposal for a Vessel Construction Manager to oversee multi-yard production of its new Medium Landing Ship class. The move aims to speed delivery of a 35-ship littoral lift fleet central to Marine Corps distributed operations in contested coastal regions, especially in the Indo-Pacific.

The U.S. Navy moved to speed up its Medium Landing Ship (LSM) program on 18 February 2026, when Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) released a Request for Proposal for a Vessel Construction Manager (VCM) to oversee production of the new class. The service is aiming for a mid-2026 award, with the selected manager acting as the prime contractor responsible for placing and supervising subcontracts across multiple shipyards. The decision signals a deliberate push to compress schedules, impose tighter cost discipline, and expand the shipbuilding industrial base behind a platform the Navy-Marine Corps team sees as central to operating inside contested littorals. LSM is designed to move Marines and their equipment routinely in environments where large amphibious ships are high-value targets and where ports may be damaged, denied, or politically inaccessible.
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U.S. Navy plans to accelerate its Medium Landing Ship program by hiring a vessel construction manager to oversee multi-yard production of the Damen LST 100-based design, enabling faster, more distributed littoral lift for Marines operating in contested coastal zones (Picture source: U.S. Navy).

NAVSEA’s plan is unusually explicit about who builds what, at least at the start. The VCM will be directed to manage construction at Bollinger Shipyards and Fincantieri Marinette Marine. Bollinger already received a September 2025 award for long lead material procurement and lead ship engineering and design work, while Fincantieri is slated to build four ships under the base contract. The VCM will then be empowered to propose the optimal contracting approach for the remaining three ships authorized under that base deal, effectively shaping how competition, workshare, and yard onboarding will proceed beyond the first tranche.

The tactical heart of the program is the decision to start with a mature, build-to-print design derived from Damen Naval’s Landing Ship Transport 100 (LST 100), selected as the baseline in December 2025. For a service that has repeatedly watched bespoke combatants drift rightward in schedule and cost, the emphasis on a proven design is not just procurement rhetoric. Congress’s own research service notes the program was previously known as Light Amphibious Warship (LAW) and has been reshaped under affordability pressure, including the need to curb requirement growth and avoid a development spiral that would undercut the whole point of fielding a numerous, workmanlike littoral lifter.

On paper, the LST 100 baseline is sized for exactly the kind of “in the island chain” problem set driving Marine Corps Force Design and Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO). The Damen product data lists a 100 m overall length, 16 m beam, and roughly 3.5 to 3.85 m draft, with 15-knot speed and range greater than 4,000 nautical miles at 13 knots, backed by diesel-mechanical propulsion using two Caterpillar 3516-C engines and controllable pitch propellers. Endurance is advertised at 15 days at sea, with bow thrusters for close maneuver in constrained waters and during beaching approaches.

Where LSM becomes operationally interesting is payload handling and shore interface. The design is built around roll-on and roll-off movement: 575 m² of RoRo space plus a 440 m² cargo deck, and a drive-through configuration enabled by a 70-ton-capable bow door and ramp and a 70-ton stern ramp. Those numbers align with the vehicles and palletized loads a Marine Littoral Regiment needs to keep sensors, air defenses, and anti-ship fires moving, while also enabling logistics shuttles that do not depend on fixed port infrastructure. A medium helicopter deck is specified, and optional davits for assault craft and cranes suggest a platform meant to improvise transfers when sea state, distance, or threat conditions complicate the textbook beach landing.

In practical tactical terms, LSM is built for repeated, low-drama moves that become decisive in a campaign: repositioning a platoon-size element with vehicles, displacing a small firing unit after it has revealed its location, or running sustainment loads to a temporary expeditionary base before adversary ISR can cue long-range fires. That is why NAVSEA frames LSM as filling the gap between small, short-range landing craft and the Navy’s large amphibious warfare ships. A 35-ship fleet is not about recreating a single massed assault wave; it is about multiplying options for distributed maneuver and distributed logistics, including the ability to accept more risk per hull because the force is not concentrated on a handful of exquisite ships.

The VCM construct is the other half of that strategy, and it is as much about operational tempo as it is about contracting. Rear Adm. Brian Metcalf, program executive officer for ships, argues the approach accelerates timelines and strengthens the industrial base by engaging multiple shipyards while the Navy supplies a mature build-to-print package. Structurally, the VCM holds the prime contract and manages shipyard subcontracts directly, putting the manager in day-to-day contractual control of shipyard performance and inserting a commercial-style buffer intended to reduce cost and schedule risk. For a program designed to deliver quantity and presence, schedule discipline is itself a warfighting attribute.

This model is not without precedent in U.S. government shipbuilding, and the Navy appears to be borrowing lessons from outside its traditional playbook. The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration selected TOTE Services in 2019 as vessel construction manager for the National Security Multi-Mission Vessel program, explicitly tasking the VCM to oversee design and construction and apply commercial best practices to deliver on time and on budget. That experience is instructive for NAVSEA because LSM, by design, is closer to a robust commercial hull with military communications and mission tailoring than to a complex Aegis combatant.

Still, the tactical promise of LSM depends on how the Navy and Marine Corps integrate survivability, signature management, and command-and-control into what is fundamentally a logistics and lift platform. In a peer fight, a beachable ship operating inside an adversary’s sensor umbrella cannot rely on armor or heavy organic weapons to stay alive. It will survive through routing, deception, dispersion, timing, and escort support, and through a doctrine that treats it as a maneuver enabler rather than a frontline combatant. That places a premium on fleet-level planning: LSM must be paired with intelligence, electronic warfare, air and missile defense, and sea denial effects that keep narrow seas usable long enough for Marines to shift positions faster than an opponent can fix them.

For the industry, the immediate calendar is the VCM competition itself. Reporting around the solicitation notes, proposals are due in early April, and NAVSEA’s target remains a mid-2026 award, after which the manager will become the central node coordinating parallel production across Bollinger and Marinette and shaping the award strategy for additional ships. For the fleet, the larger milestone is delivery: congressional reporting anticipates construction beginning in late 2026 with the first ship delivered by 2029, a timeline that reflects both urgency in the Indo-Pacific and a hard-earned recognition that requirements discipline is the only path to volume.

Written by Evan Lerouvillois, Defense Analyst.

Evan studied International Relations, and quickly specialized in defense and security. He is particularly interested in the influence of the defense sector on global geopolitics, and analyzes how technological innovations in defense, arms export contracts, and military strategies influence the international geopolitical scene.