Name Bougainville Awarded 30 June 2016 Length 257 m | Namesake Bougainville Campaign Status On order | |
 | ||
Displacement 44,971 long tons (45,693 t) Builder | ||
USS Bougainville (LHA-8) is a planned America-class amphibious assault ship to be built for the United States Navy. It will be the second Navy ship to be named Bougainville. Bougainville will be built by Huntington Ingalls Industries at its shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi and is expected to deliver in 2024.
Design
The design of Bougainville is based on USS Makin Island, itself an improved version of the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship. While Makin Island had a well deck, the earlier two Flight 0 America-class ships USS America and USS Tripoli were designed and built without a well deck to make space for aircraft and aviation fuel. Bougainville will be the first Flight 1 America-class ship, and as such will include a well deck. The design of the Flight 1 America-class ships, including that of the Bougainville, adopts a compromise, incorporating a slightly smaller aircraft hangar as well as smaller medical and other spaces to fit a small well deck for surface connector operations. The island structure will also be modified to free up more room on the flight deck to accommodate maintenance of V-22s, compensating for some of the lost aircraft hangar space.
Bougainville will be the first in her class built with a redesigned and stronger main deck; the earlier America-class vessels America and Tripoli each required retrofitting in order to handle the strain of daily Marine F-35B Lightning II STOVL operations. In addition, Bougainville will incorporate the Enterprise Air Surveillance Radar (EASR) volume air search radar in lieu of the AN/SPS-48G air search radar in America and Tripoli. The Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers starting with John F. Kennedy and the planned LX(R) will also have this radar.