gCaptain’s Maritime Monday this week is part one of a retrospective of ships operating in ice. Both interesting and amusing.

The New York Times is reporting two veteran FBI agents, members of the Hostage Rescue Team, were killed in an exercise while attempting a FAST roping descent from a helicopter to the deck of a merchant ship.

If you haven’t seen and heard it yet, you may want to check out the Navy Times article about the collision between USS Porter (DDG-78) and a supertanker that occurred shortly before 1:00 AM, May 12. It includes four minutes and nine seconds of audio recorded on the bridge

“Hear the audio: Chaos on bridge before brutal ship collision”

This is one of those opportunities to learn from the mistakes of others, and a good illustration of why the “right hand rule” exists.

As you may remember the Offshore Patrol Cutter has a requirement for ballistic protection over limited areas of the ship. Some of our patrol boats are being equipped with ballistic protection in addition to body armor for boarding parties. This seems like a good idea, but significant ballistic protection used to mean armor. Now it might include something like Kevlar.

Businessinsider reports the development of a new Poly-Urethane ballistic protection material that can also be used for ports and windshields that is even lighter.

Avionics-intelligence.com is reporting that EADS North America is converting a prototype CN235 airframe into a maintenance trainer for the HC-144A.

“Engineers will transform the CN235, configuring it with systems from the HC-144. The systems will have built-in faults to provide maintenance personnel with the opportunity to learn troubleshooting on actual HC-144 aircraft.”

There has been a report of a fatal use of force by the Philippine Coast Guard against a small Taiwanese fishing vessel.

There is certainly a lot of tension in the area, but the Philippines claim the incident took place in waters recognized as Philippine by all parties. The part of the story I find most disturbing was this statement by the Philippine Coast Guard spokesman.

Balilo said the coastguard quickly left the area after it saw a third vessel, “a big white ship”, come into view.

“Our people felt threatened so they left the area,” he said.

Because they left the scene rather than continuing with the seizure of the vessel it will be impossible to have a proper investigation of the incident.

Eleven Philippine Coast Guardsmen have been suspended pending results of an investigation.

Canada recently signed a $288M (presumably Canadian $) contract with Irving Shipbuilding of Halifax to define their new Arctic Offshore Patrol Vessels.

CBC News finds it difficult to understand why it should cost that much to “design” a ship that is based on an already existing ship, the Norweigian Svalbard,  although the Canadian ship will, reportedly be smaller and somewhat simplified, when other countries have apparently acquired similar ships complete for less money.

The response from the yard and the government is that there is a lot more to the contract than design. You can see a report on their response here.

If, as it appears, the contract includes long lead time items and everything short of actual construction of the ships, then the preconstruction costs are similar to the Offshore Patrol Cutter, which is a smaller, but I believe, more complex ship.

At the very least, it is a cautionary tale, a warning to make sure the full scope of a project is explained to the media.