Liferaft Systems Australia (LSA) are proud to announce the final installation, deployment test and commissioning of the LSA Marine Evacuation Systems and Link Liferafts recently installed on EPF-16.
EPF-16 refers to the USNS Lansing (EPF-16), the sixteenth and final Spearhead-class Expeditionary Fast Transport (EPF) for the U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command, built by Austal USA in Mobile, Alabama.
The MES installation on USNS Lansing marks the end of an era for LSA installations on the Spearhead Class of Navy ships constructed by Austal USA with each vessel fitted with 2 x 17m LSA MES and 4 x 100 person LSA SOLAS A Link Liferafts.
LSA North American Manager Mr Vlad Prato commented;
“LSA are proud to be partners of Austal USA by supplying each EPF with world class Marine Evacuation Systems and large capacity liferafts. We installed our MES on USNS Spearhead (T-EPF-1) way back in 2011 and have worked hand in glove with Austal USA and each vessel representative over the past 15 years”.
LSA Managing Director Mike Grainger commented;
“We congratulate Austal USA on achieving this major milestone event in terms of launching EPF-16 which is the end of a series of vessels for the U.S. Navy. It has been a pleasure working with Austal USA on every EPF vessel over the past 15 years, supplying the world’s best Marine Evacuation Systems to our customer based in Mobile, Alabama USA. We also wish to acknowledge the support of our local service provider Mr Mac McGovern (Mobile Ships Chandlery) in working with us to ensure that each MES installation and commissioning has gone without complication or delays”.
Vlad Prato continued by saying “we look forward to working with Austal USA for future vessels which may have a similar MES configuration to the EPF vessels, potentially enabling inter-changeable operability throughout the fleet. Having worked closely with Austal USA and Military Sealift Command over such a long period of time has provided us with an intimate knowledge of their requirements and therefore we will continue to provide our MES and technical support as we have done over the past 20 years and into the future.”
For more information on LSA products and what we do, please visit our website: www.LSAMES.com