The Marine Protector class is a class of coastal patrol boats of the United States Coast Guard. The 87-foot-long vessels are based on the

Stan 2600 The Damen Stan 2600 is a line of patrol vessels built or designed by Netherlands shipbuilding firm the Damen Group. The first vessels of this design were delivered to the Hong Kong Police. The United States Coast Guard Marine Protector ...

design by Damen Group, and were built by

Bollinger Shipyards Bollinger Shipyards is an American constructor of ships, workboats and patrol vessels. Its thirteen shipyards and forty drydocks are located in Louisiana and Texas. Its drydocks range in capacity from vessels of 100 tons displacement to 22,000 to ...

of Lockport, Louisiana. Each boat is named after sea creatures which fly or swim The Coast Guard placed its original order in 1999 for 50 boats, which were delivered by mid-2002. Several additional orders brought the class to a total of 74 ships, with the last, , being completed in October 2009. Four additional vessels were built for Foreign Military Sales, with two each going to Malta and Yemen. In May 2021, The United States announced that it would be sending three ships to the

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The Marine Protector class replaced the 82-foot . These older boats had one small and one large berthing area, and they had to stop for five or more minutes to deploy or retrieve their pursuit inflatable boat via a small crane. The last Point-class cutter was decommissioned in 2003. In 2020 the Department of Homeland Security proposed a budget for the Coast Guard for 2021 where 8 Marine Protector cutters would be decommissioned, as their missions could be taken by new

Sentinel class cutters The Sentinel-class cutter, also known as Fast Response Cutter due to its program name, is part of the United States Coast Guard's Integrated Deepwater System Program, Deepwater program. At it is similar to, but larger than the lengthened 1980s- ...

General characteristics

Missions include combating drug smuggling, illegal immigration, marine fisheries enforcement and

search and rescue Search and rescue (SAR) is the search for and provision of aid to people who are in distress or imminent danger. The general field of search and rescue includes many specialty sub-fields, typically determined by the type of terrain the search ...

support. Since the

September 11, 2001 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...

many have a homeland security mission in the form of ports waterways and coastal security (PWCS) patrols. Boarding parties can be launched while the vessel is underway, through the cutter's stern launching ramp. The attached rigid hull inflatable boat (RHIB) has been upgraded since the initial inception of this class of cutter, in an effort to increase speed and sea state sustainability for boarding parties and rescue and assistance teams. The stern launching system requires just a single crewmember to remain on deck to launch or retrieve the boarding party. Their high-speed pursuit boat uses the same diesel fuel as the cutters. The cutters consume approximately 165 gallons of diesel per hour at their maximum speed of . Like all new U.S. Coast Guard vessels, the Marine Protector class are designed to accommodate crews of mixed gender with five separate small berthing spaces accommodating standard crews of ten with maximum berthing for 12. and assigned to guard a United States Navy submarine base in Kings Bay, Georgia, and and guard another submarine base in Bangor, Washington, mount an additional machine gun, one operated by remote control.

Boats in class

References

External links

Globalsecurity.org
- WPB 87' Marine Protector Class
U.S. Coast Guard: 87-foot Coastal Patrol Boat (WPB) - Marine Protector Class
{{DEFAULTSORT:Marine Protector class Marine Protector-class coastal patrol boats, Patrol vessels of the United States