September 3, 2008: For the last three years, Canada has been developing an interesting variation on the LPD type amphibious ship. This was the 27,000 ton Joint Support Ship (JSS). It looks like an LPD (it has a helicopter deck aft, in addition to a well with some landing craft), but is basically a combination tanker/cargo/vehicle transport (roll on/roll off) ship, with communications capabilities and space for a hundred or so staff personnel (for running a humanitarian operation ashore) and a small hospital. The ship is built to commercial, not military, standards. It carries some defensive weapons, but is not really built for combat. The crew of about 200 can also serve as a floating headquarters for any small scale military operation. The ship is built (with a stronger hull) to deal with sea ice (up to two feet thick). Originally, the JSS was to cost nearly $600 million each (for three), but that soon expanded to over $800 million per ship.

The JSS project is now stalled, and considered dead, because no ship builder could come up with a design that could be built at the price the Canadians were willing to pay (probably about a billion dollars per ship).