The Navy’s largest shipbuilder, Huntington Ingalls, announced that its Ingalls Shipbuilding division has received a $187.46 million advance procurement contract from the U.S. Navy to provide long-lead-time material and advance procurement activities for amphibious assault ship LHA 9.

“This contract allows us to maintain the health of our critical nationwide shipbuilding supplier base while continuing our serial production of large-deck amphibs,” Ingalls Shipbuilding President Brian Cuccias said. “We will work closely with our Navy-Marine Corps partners and our suppliers across the U.S. to build another highly capable, versatile and survivable warship.”

The LHA 9 will be an amphibious assault ship of the American-class.

America-class ships will facilitate forward presence and power projection as an integral part of joint, interagency, and multinational maritime expeditionary forces, supporting the Marine Corps tenets of Operational Maneuver from the Sea (OMFTS) and Ship to Objective Maneuver (STOM). As an amphibious ship, her mission includes embarking, transporting, controlling, inserting, sustaining and extracting elements of a marine air-ground task force, and support forces by helicopters and tilt-rotor aircraft.

Amphibious warships are designed to support the Marine Corps tenets of Operational Maneuver From the Sea (OMFTS) and Ship to Objective Maneuver (STOM), according to the Navy’s website. They must be capable of sailing in harm’s way and enable rapid combat power buildup ashore in the face of opposition. Because of their inherent capabilities, these ships have been and will continue to be called upon to also support humanitarian and other contingency missions on short notice. The United States maintains the largest and most capable amphibious force in the world.

The LHA-class amphibious assault warships are the centerpiece of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps’ amphibious ready group. U.S. Navy Amphibious Assault Ships project power and maintain presence by serving as the cornerstone of the amphibious ready group (ARG) or expeditionary strike group (ESG). These ships transport and land elements of the Marine expeditionary unit (MEU) or Marine expeditionary brigade (MEB) with a combination of aircraft and landing craft.