September 28, 2008
Behold! the Sentinel class, 153 foot patrol boats.
The vessel is robust, steel hulled, lightly ice strengthened and considered seaworthy enough that a version of these vessels was recently been put into service with the South African Coast Guard, where its patrol area includes the violent seas around Cape Agulhas and parts of the Southern Ocean. A version is also in service with the UK's customs service.
In other words...the design has been vetted!
NO SURPRISES THIS TIME!
The vessel is quite heavily armed for a Coast Guard cutter with 4x.50 caliber machine guns and a 25mm chain gun. Stern launch systems are exceedingly convenient and safe, but because of their location and the need for a large hole in the structure, they have caused some structural issues and had teething problems.
However, this stern launching system is in service with both the closely related Dutch and UK versions of the design. Thus, it has been through its "learning experience" phase. Thus there should be minimal issues with it.
After the delays, disappointments and disasters involving procurement, this is a very heartening decision.
More here and here.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
05:41 AM
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Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sun Sep 28 17:50:23 2008 (+rSRq)
What kind of ammunition do you think they'd carry for "routine" use of that 25mm chaingun? Looking at the linked article, the choices seem to be HEI (I assume "high explosive incendiary"?) and APDS ("armor piercing discarding sabot") and I'm inclined to think that APDS would be their ammo of choice, since that's what they'd need if they were shooting up a steel-hulled ship. It seems to me that HEI would just bounce.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Sun Sep 28 19:55:13 2008 (+rSRq)
The article doesn't say under what terms the design was aquired, I presume it wasn't just freely available to any interested shipyard. Do you know how something like that is normally done, or have you seen an article that described how it was done for this deal?
A last interesting bit.. that list of expected duties from the FRC faq is pretty comprehensive. Is there any CG duty other than ice breaking that isn't on that list?
Posted by: David at Mon Sep 29 02:51:23 2008 (UpR/+)
Note that I'm not a gunners mate and If I knew what I was talking about I probably couldn't discuss it.
A last interesting bit.. that list of expected duties from the FRC faq is pretty comprehensive. Is there any CG duty other than ice breaking that isn't on that list?
The vessel seems ill equipped for any buoy tending aside from changing bulbs and solar panels. It's not really suited for the western rivers either. Both require highly specialized vessels.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Mon Sep 29 12:25:54 2008 (vkRRB)
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