26 new small boats help strengthen Iraqi navy

[unhappycamper]

The Coast Guard recently delivered the first six of 26 new response boats to the Iraqi Navy through the Foreign Military Sales program.


26 new small boats help strengthen Iraqi navy
By Amy McCullough - Staff writer
Posted : Sunday Nov 9, 2008 9:11:18 EST

The Coast Guard’s Foreign Military Sales program is about to close one of its largest projects ever — the delivery of 26 Defender-class response boats and 80 spare engines to the Iraqi navy.

The service so far has delivered six of the 27-foot small boats, known to the Iraqis as fast-attack boats. With its Yamaha twin engines, the boats, similar to the Coast Guard’s response boat-small, can go up to 50 knots, a significant improvement over the Iraqis’ aging boats “that reached 10 or 15 knots on a good day,” said Michael Tangora, the Coast Guard’s director of acquisition services.

The next 10 boats are expected to ship out the second week of December, with the final 10 boats arriving by next summer.

The new small boat fleet will strengthen the Iraqi navy and the port of Umm Qasr, located in southern Iraq on the Kuwait border, not far from the Iranian border. The boats will be used to patrol the Shatt al-Arab waterway, which is shared by the three countries and flows into the Persian Gulf.

The $8.4 million project also includes training for the Iraqi navy. A detachment from Coast Guard Training Center Yorktown, Va., arrived at Umm Qasr a few weeks ago, around the time the first boat shipment was delivered. The detachment, made up mostly of boat operators and boat maintenance crew members, is training Iraqi sailors on operating and maintaining the new boats.


Rest of article at: http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/11/coastguard_iraqinavy_110908/%2e