The Light Amphibious Warship is designed to fill the gap in capability between the Navy’s large, multipurpose amphibious warfare / L-class ships and smaller short-range landing craft such as the Landing Craft Utility and the Landing Craft Air Cushion.
LAW is to be a low signature, beaching, shore-to-shore vessel with intra-theater endurance capable of operating independently or in collaboration with other surface ships, other LAWs, joint task forces, or coalition forces in contested environments in support of Distributed Maritime Operations, Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment/Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations across the competition-conflict spectrum.