

The Army’s Maneuver Support Vessel-Light. (Vigor LLC photo)
WASHINGTON — After needed repairs sidelined the US Army’s new logistics ship for nearly a year, the service anticipates receiving the vessel back by month’s end before finally launching into a testing series.
Designed to replace the aging Landing Craft Mechanized-8 (LCM-8), the Army tapped Vigor Works to produce the initial Maneuver Support Vessel-Light (MSV-L) prototype. But after the vessel was delivered to the service in early February 2024, it began experiencing mechanical issues en route to Camp Pendleton and was turned to the company for evaluation and repairs.
“The prototype vessel’s repairs to its cooling system were completed at the OEM’s [original equipment manufacturer’s] site in Washington state,” a Program Executive Office for Combat Support & Combat Service Support spokesperson wrote in an emailed response to questions by Breaking Defense.
“Repair is complete; expect the vessel to be returned [in] January 2025,” the Army spokesperson later added.
The repair check totals $200,000, the service said, and the delays testing the new vessel in open waters did not halt work on subsequent boats. Right now, the Army is moving forward with the production of a second MSV-L, while also awarding deals for the company to build three more.
In the meantime, the service is working though the logistics associated with getting that first MSV-L prototype into the US Indo-Pacific theater by the April-June timeframe to resume experimentation and follow-on test activities.
And while the service didn’t expand on what that may include, last year a two-star general leading the 8th Theater Sustainment Command provided some insights.
“The vessel is going to come to Hawaii,” Maj. Gen. Jered Helwig told Breaking Defense in May 2024. (Helwig has since earned a third star and is serving as the deputy commander for US Transportation Command.)
Once there, he added, 8th Theater Sustainment Command soldiers will be working with the testing and acquisition communities to assess the vessel over a nine-month to one-year period.
“Everything that we can knock off that list we will do in the archipelago … because that allows us to do the tests in the environment that the vessel will operate in ultimately,” Helwig added. “It’s a great opportunity to really kind of get the vessel, then see it in the environment that, ultimately, it’ll operate in.”
Sustainment abroad
While the Trump administration could potentially shake up foreign policy and national security priorities, for now preparing for a military contingency against China in the Indo-Pacific remains a chief focus.
For the Army, that means looking for ways to sustain the force in the Indo-Pacific theater and making sure its fleet of existing vessels, the new MSV-L, unmanned vessels, and a possible MSV-Heavy are all ready to go.
Part of that work centers on finding new avenues to maintain and repair vessels abroad, and the service put this to the test as its contribution to the Pentagon’s recent Regional Sustainment Framework initiative. Rolled out in mid-2024, the Pentagon plan called on the service to first focus on the Indo-Pacific region and finding ways to sustain equipment abroad.
Steven Morani, the acting assistant secretary of defense for sustainment, told reporters on Jan. 17 that services are conducting pilot programs, or “pathfinders,” to help the department work through some of the contractual relationship questions.
“What we try to do is look at those workloads that were already established starting with the systems that the services are operating regionally already,” he explained. “We also looked at programs where you had foreign military sales of equipment and you had arrangements in the theater where companies, both US and allied, are doing that repair and expanding that. We’re working through some of the data rights issues for systems.”
For the Army’s “pathfinder” in the Indo-Pacific region, its Logistics Support Vessel-3 — the USAV General Brehon B. Somervell — underwent repairs in South Korea late last month instead of returning stateside, Lt. Gen. Heidi Hoyle, the Army’s deputy chief of staff for logistics (G-4), explained in early January. That move, the three-star general explained, saved the crew from traveling 9,000 nautical miles over 38 sailing days just to get back to the US West Coast.
“We did this operation in Korea, it was five days, we have now proven that we can work with our partners and allies for ships to conduct maintenance forward in the battle space,” Hoyal added.
Maj. Gen. Michael Lalor, the commander of the Tank-automotive and Armaments Command, worked on the contract piece of that work and said the Army is now “actively renegotiating that and expanding” similar deals in the region and around the globe.
“Where we can open our aperture to where we can do forward, projected maintenance,” he told reporters Jan. 15.
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