USS Emory S. Land moors at Outer Harbor for Adelaide visit

The 200-m long USS Emory S. Land, moored at Outer Harbor has a virtual indoor firing range and a 200-seat American diner.

A giant floating naval base, complete with virtual indoor shooting range and 200-seat American diner, is moored at Outer Harbor for the next week.

The 200m-long USS Emory S. Land is like a huge Formula One pit crew for nuclear submarines and warships.

It has 480 crew members, including 36 Australians, who staff fully-equipped mechanical, electrical and repair workshops capable of building and fixing just about anything aboard US and allied warships.

“The mission of Emory S. Land is to be a floating naval base to provide the support that submarines and surface ships might need anywhere in the world … We describe our mission as repair, rearm and resupply,” said the ship’s commanding officer, Captain Brent Spillner, at Outer Harbor on Tuesday.

Commanding Officer USS Emory S. Land, Captain Brent Spillner aboard the ship. Picture Mark Brake

Submarines, which rely on stealth and secrecy, are at their most vulnerable when surfacing for supplies, so the crew often just has a few hours’ notice of their mission.

“We swarm them with sailors. We try to fix as much as we can in the time we’ve got available. Once everything that has to be fixed, is fixed, we let them sail back out to sea and dive again and get back on their mission,” Captain Spillner said.

The crew conducts weapons training on two virtual ranges – akin to video golf driving ranges. A 50-calibre machine gun uses fake bullets and is air-powered.

Gunners Mate Chief Brett Peterman displays the weapons aboard USS Emory S. Land. Picture Mark Brake

The mess hall, refurbished in the early 2000s when the ship was in Italy, is styled like a traditional American diner and seats 200 people.

The Emory S. Land’s visit is the latest tangible example of increased co-operation under the AUKUS security pact.

The 36 Australians are embedded in the crew, learning trades and engineering skills, in preparation for a mission later in the year, meeting a US submarine off Western Australia.

During their Adelaide visit, the crew will exchange information with Australians at Osborne Naval Shipyard, where the nation’s future nuclear-powered submarines will be built as part of a $368bn project.

The US Navy’s Sean Reese works on one of the many heavy lathes aboard USS Emory S. Land. Picture Mark Brake

This follows the first of 129 skilled workers from Osborne-based ASC leaving for Pearl Harbor in June to work on US nuclear-powered submarines in the first AUKUS training program of its type.

They deployed to Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, in Hawaii, to directly train in the maintenance of Virginia Class nuclear-powered submarines alongside their US counterparts.