Bollinger Team awarded military’s JHSV design contract

The military is looking to Bollinger Shipyards Incorporated to design its Joint High Speed Vessel.

Robert A Socha, executive vice president, sales and marketing, announced last week that the company had won the multi-million dollar Phase 1 design contract.

The JHSV program is a cooperative effort of Navy, Army, Marines and Special Operations Command forces, he said.

Specifications for the vessel call for it to be a high-speed, shallow draft platform intended for rapid intra-theater transport of medium-sized cargo payloads, he said in a release.

Bollinger was one of three companies awarded a six-month design contract for the first phase of the project. As such, the local shipbuilding firm will be eligible to compete for the Phase II Detail Design and Construction contract, Socha said.

Bollinger is partnering with Australian-based shipyard INCAT Tasmania and Tasmania-based design group Revolution Design for the principal design and guidance with construction. INCAT, working under a Bollinger/ INCAT joint venture, built a number of high-speed vessels used by the Department of Defense for experimentation and logistics support.

According to the release, the JHSV is a new generation, multi-use platform capable of transporting troops, tanks, armored vehicles, weapons and other equipment overseas. It can operate in shallow waters and can reach speeds over 35 knots fully loaded.

Bollinger used INCAT’s existing 112-meter wave-piercing catamaran – the largest catamaran ever built in Australia – as the baseline for its JHSV submission, Socha said.