The Marine Protector class is a class of coastal patrol boats of the

United States Coast Guard The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is the maritime security, search and rescue, and law enforcement service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the country's eight uniformed services. The service is a maritime, military, mult ...

. The 87-foot-long vessels are based on the Stan 2600 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

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, with two each going to

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and

Yemen Yemen (; ar, ٱلْيَمَن, al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen,, ) is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and borders Saudi Arabia to the Saudi Arabia–Yemen border, north and ...

. 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

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many have a

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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 The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

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