The Navy League’s on line magazine, Seapower, reports on the Commandant’s response to a question as to why 87 foot Marine Protector class patrol boats are being decommissioned without direct replacement. Bottom line, we need to save some money and between the new FRCs and the Response Boat, Medium, we have the need pretty well covered.

It is absolutely budgetarily influenced and informed within the topline, he said. “I’m the last guy as a cutterman who wants to remove a cutter from service, but I think we’ll have plenty of capacity. That fast response cutter — its seakeeping, its legs — is considerably more [capable] than the patrol boats it’s replacing.”

Referring to the March 10 decommissioning of the Marine Protector-class USCGC Dorado at Crescent City, California, Schultz pointed out that with the mission demands and capabilities in that area resident in the Coast Guard’s heavy-weather-capable 45-foot response boats and the nearby aviation capability, ‘taking out some of those 87’s was a relatively rational, hard choice we had to make.”