Expeditionary Sea Base

Expeditionary Sea Base (ESB) ships are highly flexible platforms that can be employed across a broad range of military operations. USS Lewis B. Puller (ESB 3) is the first ESB delivered and, along with follow-on ships Hershel “Woody” Williams (ESB 4) and Miguel Keith (ESB 5), are optimized to support a wide variety of maritime missions, including Airborne Mine Countermeasures (AMCM), Special Operations Force (SOF), and limited Crisis Response. ESBs are equipped with a four-spot flight deck and hangar and are designed around four core capabilities: aviation facilities, berthing, equipment staging support, and command and control. The ESB flight deck and hangar support H53, H60, V22 tilt-rotor, and H1 aircraft operations as well as the launch and recovery of unmanned aerial systems.