To control costs, the ships will not be built to combat vessel standards and are designed primarily to support three military hovercraft (such as the Landing Craft Air Cushion), vehicle staging with a sideport ramp and large mooring fenders.

[1] An auxiliary support ship, Montford Point's role would be a seagoing pier for friendly forces in case accessibility to onshore bases are denied.

[1][7] The ESD supports a vehicle staging area, side port ramp, large mooring fenders, and up to three landing craft air cushioned vessel lanes.

LCACs moved Amphibious Assault Vehicles from the base and offloaded them onto the ship, demonstrating the ESD's ability to facilitate at-sea transfers to serve as a mobile seabase.

[18] Montford Point began a series of Post-Delivery Tests and Trials (PDT&T) events beginning in April 2014 that took place over several months, which included an Initial Operational Test and Evaluation (IOT&E) end-to-end event to determine operational effectiveness and the week-long Pacific Horizon 2015 humanitarian assistance and disaster relief exercise.