20 More RB-S II for $8M

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A boat crew from Coast Guard Station St. Petersburg, Florida, conducts training near the station on a new 29-foot response boat-small II Aug. 25, 2014. The Coast Guard placed a delivery order for 20 additional boats Jan. 12, 2018. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Seaman Meredith Manning.

CG-9 reports that a contract has been let for 20 more 29 foot Response Boat, Small II.

Coast Guard Orders 20 Response Boats

January 18, 2018

The Coast Guard placed a delivery order for 20 response boats-small II (RB-S IIs), worth approximately $8 million, with Metal Shark Aluminum Boats of Jeanerette, Louisiana, Jan. 12. The RB-S IIs will be delivered to Sector Buffalo, New York, this spring and summer.

The 29-foot RB-S IIs can reach a top speed of over 40 knots and are used for a range of missions, including search and rescue, vessel boarding team deployment and law enforcement missions, port security, drug and migrant interdiction, and environmental response operations.

This brings the total of RB-S IIs ordered to 322; 280 RB-S IIs have been delivered.

For more information: Response Boat-Small II program page

That equates to $400,000 per boat. The initial 2011 contract was for 38 boats at a cost of $13M or approximately $342,105 each. That is about a 17% increase over 9 years. That’s probably not out of line.

Drone Rescue

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An interesting short video. Heard about this first from BBC. (Thanks to my wife.)

A drone reaches people in the water and drops an inflatable float. This might be useful as a response to a man-over-board, particularly if the drone were equipped with low light level/IR. The drone could not only drop a float but could also hold position over the person in the water until the ship can come back for a pick-up. A light on the drone might help.

CGAS Corpus Christi Relocates

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Caller.com reports that the Coast Guard has begun moving aircraft from Naval Air Station Corpus Christi to a new facility at the Corpus Christi International Airport.

“It gives the Coast Guard quick access to the primary runway. Being at this airport, our control tower is 24-7, the airport is open 24-7,” Gross said. “We also have police, EMS and fire department crews here. There are things here they wouldn’t normally get at the naval base.”

The move was accelerated because of damage to the Naval Air Station facility that resulted from Hurricane Harvey.

Coast Guard Eyes Leasing Civilian Jail Ship to Hold Detainees–Military.com

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Military.Com reports that the Coast Guard is considering procuring a civilian run vessel to hold and transport prisoners taken during drug interdiction operation.

“…Zukunft said the service is exploring the possibility of leasing a dedicated commercial vessel that would do nothing but hold suspects until they can be transferred to the United States.
“The ship might actually be leased through the Department of Defense or SouthCom. It might be something like a commercial offshore supply vessel — a platform abundantly available given limited offshore drilling activity.
“While it would be a civilian ship, Zukunft said it would be staffed with Coast Guard law enforcement augmentees to supervise the detained population.”

Remote Control Boat and Drone Attacks–USNI

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US Naval Institute news service brings us a report of another unconventional attack by remote controlled boats, this time on a commercial tanker. We have seen this type of attack before, but apparently this was “at least the sixth time Houthis used remote-controlled boats to attack shipping and oil assets in the Red Sea, according to a tally of Saudi and Gulf region news reports.”

This report is buried in a report about a drone attack on Russian bases in Syria, but there are some interesting details.

The post reports an examination of a captured remote controlled boat,

The 30-foot long patrol boat, originally manufactured by the UAE-based company Al Fattan Ship Industry, was one of at least 60 donated by the UAE Coast Guard to the Yemeni Navy before the civil war kicked off in 2015.
The boat’s control unit was connected to a remotely operated video camera and a Garmin GPS antenna, suggesting the operator was able to stream live footage of the boat’s progress during the attack, and was fitted with a Soviet-manufactured P-15 Termit anti-ship missile and shaped explosive charge.

The P-15 Termit is another designation for the Styx, an early Soviet anti-ship missile. It is 5.8 m (19 ft) long and weighs 2,580 kg (5,690 lb).

SS-N-2 Styx/P-15 Termit

In countering the sUAV attack, the Russians used both hard and soft kill. The Pantsir-S reportedly use to shoot down seven of the drones is a short range, combined gun and missile, anti-air system. Six more were brought down by electronic counter-measures.

According to the report, Putin said, “These aerial vehicles were disguised – I would like to stress that – as homemade. But it is obvious that some high-tech equipment was used,” Perhaps Putin is not aware, or simply refuses to acknowledge, how sophisticated hobby drone auto-pilots have become. All you need is Google Earth for targeting and you can set in way-points and altitudes and have it fly to any point within the range of the aircraft.

SNA Symposium, Virtual Tour

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airbus ds trs 4D SNA 217

If you were unable to attend the Surface Navy Association Symposium, but would like to see what you missed, NavyRecognition offers a series of videos. They include a number of systems that have been discussed here including, smart projectiles for the 57mm, unmanned surface vehicles, the LRASM Long Range Anti-Ship Missile, SeaRAM as a replacement for Phalanx, TRAPS Towed Reelable Active Passive Sonar, MK20 Mod 1 Electro-Optical Sensor System (EOSS), TRS-3D Baseline D multi-mode radar (MMR) ordered for the ninth NSC.

If you want to look primarily at the frigate proposals as well as the proposed weapons modules for the LCS which might also be applicable to the icebreaker, there is this composite video. 

Incidentally why was there no mention of this symposium on the National Cuttermen Association Chapter, Surface Navy Association website?

Narcosubmarines: Nexus of Terrorism and Drug Trafficking?–CIMSEC

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There is decent post on CIMSEC looking at the possibility of terrorists using the vehicles developed by drug smugglers to carry out an attack. The author also does a pretty good job of explaining why smugglers might be unlikely to cooperate. There is also a worthwhile bibliography associated with the post that appears to have been an academic treatise.

A 6,200 mile Range, Autonomous Underwater 100 Megaton Nuclear Delivery System (Really Big Torpedo), Poseidon

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nuclear-capable underwater drone called Ocean Multipurpose System Status-6.

Defense News Reports that “A draft of the Pentagon’s Nuclear Posture Review confirms the existence of an underwater nuclear drone made and operated by Russia, a capability the U.S. Defense Department had not previously publicly acknowledged.”

Maybe this is another reason we might want to add an ASW capability to our ships.

(Perhaps we have someone out there who can translate the info on the graphic above?)