A threat to a LPD can be much less totaly impotant against a MV-22 or Sea Knight. A sub would be worthless aganst an heli unless it decides to surface and use a MANPAD or .50 cal. Even an Iowa class battleship wouln't be able to do much against a MV-22 unless it flew right over it. Yes if the enemy had say a Sovermenny class DDG than it would be a threat to both the LPD and the Helis but that ship will be target #1 for the whole Navy and unless it has tons of backup its going away very fast.

Which statement isn't true?

As for the first, the EFV as of 2008 is still in the design phase. http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...av-program.htm It won't be in the fleet until 2015. http://tripatlas.com/Amphibious_Assault_Vehicle

As for the second statement, here's a direct quote from General Conway:
"We need the Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle. If you're not familiar with it, it is a new form of amphibious landing craft--our old one is a great vehicle, but it putters through the water at eight miles an hour. United States Navy has put us on notice, and it makes complete sense, that they cannot go closer than twenty-five miles to a coast because anti-access systems will sink entire ships. So they're going to operate in a safe distance from the shore. That makes our problem quantum more difficult in terms of getting the Marines in. This Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle is two vehicles in one. It is a capability that skims over the top of the water at about 30 knots...then when it goes ashore it becomes our armored personnel carrier. And again, is a very capable vehicle that we think we just need to have."

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I'll have to read up on STOM...

If the answer to the question truly is Kiloitis or other conventional threats, then I'd agree completely. But most of the numerous potential littoral threats are just as lethal to smaller craft (if not more lethal) than they are to warships or amphibious warfare ships. I'm thinking less in terms of conventional warship threats (because we'd sink them with airstrikes first) and more in terms of hybrid threats coming from a populated littoral and coastal area.

Unless its a hostage evac mission or something simailer I don't see us landing marines in any populated area at all simply because it puts civies in harms way. I think it was MacArthur who said: "You don't attack where the enemy is you attack where he ain't."

Our enemy is in the Strait of Hormuz; as are lots and lots of civilians. Does that mean we pull out and try to secure the sea lanes by attacking soft targets in retaliation? Isreal's enemy was in Lebanon in 2006; should they not have put their corvettes of the coast?

I'd like to call your attention to General Mullen's speech, at about the 15 minute point, where he cited research that stated that by 2025, 75% of the earth's population will live within 35 miles of saltwater. Our expeditionary objectives are increasingly going to be located in populated areas like Hormuz, Aden, Malacca, etc.

This a good example of intra-service politics. It's less the content of what he said, and more the way he spins it. He makes it sound like it's all the Navy's fault. The Marines have been talking about operating from over-the-horizon since the '80s, so it's not just the Navy. The whole STOM concept is vague, ambiguous, and completely untested. There's never been a brigade-level amphibious assault conducted according to the STOM concepts. There's a lot of pieces to it that remain vague too. For example, the connectors (which includes the EFV). There's also heavy lift LCACs that exist only on powerpoint, additionally the role of the JHSV is unclear. In a forcible entry scenario, heavy lift LCACs aren't useful except as follow ons. The EFVs are the ones who hit the beach first. Unless you want to seize a port, the JHSV isn't useful. They haven't really articulated exactly what they want to do. They also don't really acknowledge that once the air assault is done, those forces essentially just become old fashioned foot infantry and doesn't have the mobility or sustainability ashore that the the surface assault has. There's a lot to be picked apart on all sides.

Part of what makes naval and Marine Corps issues interesting is that nobody really has taken the time to sort it all out. There's a lot of unresolved questions that everyone seems to be aware of, but nobody really knows the answer to, and often trying to answer the questions is politically delicate because people have built up careers on these multi-billion dollar programs.