55.4.1 Mission

The mission is to embark, deploy, and land assault forces by sea and by air onto a defended beach in the face of opposition. Supporting equipment (armor, vehicles and artillery) and material (food, fuel, ammunition) are landed also. Shipboard medical facilities are provided to handle casualties from the beach. They have also proven useful during humanitarian missions.

55.4.2 Design Drivers

Amphibious warfare is one of the oldest forms of naval warfare, dating back to the Greeks invading Troy (Homer does not record if it was an opposed landing). Skipping ahead a few centuries, the Vikings raided, terrorized, and eventually lodged forces in the British Isles. Through most of history it meant landing troops by small boats rowed ashore onto a foreign soil. The ship-to-shore transfer was both hazardous and slow. Coordination and communications between the shore and the mother ship(s) were primitive, and many amphibious landings failed, or else resulted in heavy casualties even if successful. A classic example, in the modern era, is the abortive landing at Gallipoli during WWI.

Delivery was often by ships of opportunity, that is, warships for which this was a secondary mission (landing ship's forces - Marines and sailors) or merchant ships pressed into service to carry army troops. Today, purpose-built ships are used.

Despite the hazards, which remain significant even today, the amphibious warfare capability is essential to modern naval warfare planners for its element of surprise. For example, the landing at Inchon helped turn the...