“Tall Ships this summer, the Tall Ships Challenge sailing festival will showcase dozens of boats large and small, including stunning replicas of historic ships like L’Hermione, shown here.” (Photo courtesy Tall Ships Philadelphia Camden 2015)

The Tall Ship Challenge is coming to Philadelphia and Camden June 25-28.

Not a lot of Coast Guard connection, other than that the Eagle will be there, and there will be a lot of work done by the Coast Guard, both regular and aux., to make it go smoothly, but it ought to be a great event.

I would like to talk about the United Arab Emirates’ 24 boat, Ghannatha program, because they seem to have departed from the usual form for patrol boats, both in their mission and their armament, apparently heavily influenced by the Swedish and Finnish Navies. They are neither typical lightly armed patrol boats nor heavily armed missile boats. In fact they come in three “flavors,”

1. Six motor gunboats capable of carrying a platoon of 40 troops
2. Six boats with automated breech loading 120mm (4.7″) mortars capable of both direct or indirect fire, and
3. Twelve missile boats with missiles of an intermediate size (larger than Hellfire, but much smaller than Harpoon).

These boats are aluminum construction and actually only about half the displacement of the Coast Guard’s 87 footers, giving them shallow draft.

For comparison the dimensions on these of the boats relative to the Coast Guard’s 87 footers looks like this:

• Ghannatha: 24×5.4×1.2 meters (first twelve)
• WPBs: 26.52×5.92×1.74 meters

Figures from Combat Fleets of the World, 16th edition.

The gunboat/transports and the mortar boats were originally built to a common design, 24 or 25 meters in length (depending on source). While they appear to be patrol boats and have “P” for “patrol” hull numbers, they were built to land troops and supplies (explaining the shallow draft). The  gun and mortar boats are being modified as noted above. The 12 missile boats are slightly larger, the design lengthened to 26.5 meters (87 feet).

Lets talk about the weapons.

Rheinmetall MLG 27 27mm gun

This weapon arms the six transport/gunboats. They are most like a typical patrol boat. The weapon is not that different from the 25mm Mk38s that arm Webber class except that they have an almost insanely high rate fire, in that, at 1700 rounds/min, they can fire the 90 rounds on the mount in just over three seconds, probably about the time it will take for the first round to hit the target. There is also apparently only one type of round, so it may not have been the best choice.

Nemo 120mm Single Barrel Advanced Mortar System

This system, which will arm six of the earlier boats, has a range of up to 10KM (11,000 yards) and a maximum rate of fire of 10 rounds/min. There are Laser guided munitions available.

MBDA Marte Mk 2/N surface-to- surface guided missiles

This system will arm the twelve slightly larger new boats. The missile weighs 310 kg and is 3.85 metres long. The warhead weighs 70 kilogram (154 pound). The missile, has “an effective range in excess of 30 km, is a fire and forget, all weather sea skimming missile with inertial mid-course navigation through way points and active radar terminal homing. The Mk2/N system incorporates a mission planning function to optimize operation.”

These missiles give these boats a range almost double that of the 57mm or 76mm guns.

NavyRecognition reports on the Naval Defence Exhibition, held 22 – 26 February 2015 in Abu Dhabi, UAE. for me the most interesting reports were:

Light Weight 40mm Gun that required no deck penetration. It is not a competitor for the 57mm but compared to the Mk38 25mm, it probably does have enough additional range to allow it to engage beyond the 4,000 yard range that I believe is necessary to prevent extemporized armaments from targeting vital systems (like the gun) on our cutters. The Mk38 mod2 reportedly has an effective range of only 2,500 meters (about 2,750 yards).

New sonars suitable for small vessels, including a towed synthetic aperture sonar suitable for sub-surface-channel mapping and variations of ASW sonars currently in USN service that can be hull mounted and towed by vessels as small as the Webber class.

Sikorsky is reporting Sikorsky and their partner Mitsubishi have thus far contracted for 11 S-76D helicopters to be used for SAR missions by the Japan Coast Guard.

According to my Combat Fleets of the World, the Japan Coast Guard already had 45 helicopters of seven different types including four earlier model S-76Cs.

The S-76 is similar in size to the H-65. Empty weights are very close. The max Take-Off weight of the S-76 is a bit higher.

Today, 27 February marked end of the Continuing Resolution that allowed the Department, including the Coast Guard, to continue to operate without an approved 2015 budget. A short term patch extending funding for another three weeks has passed (or is expected to pass) the House.

No, Homeland Security heads toward shutdown as House fails to pass 3-week spending bill.