Naval capabilities
As the maritime operating environment continues to change, questions persist over the continued relevance of the offshore patrol vessel (OPVs). Andrea Valentino speaks to a range of experts about
the importance of OPVs to current civilian and military operations, how maritime nations are especially eager on their use, challenges around construction and development – and how whether, in a time of rising great-power tension, OPVs are really the ships militaries need to keep their coastlines safe.
Abandon ship? T
ime was that naval planners, to say nothing of the public at large, expected their ships to loom over the competition – literally. In the years leading up to the First World War, for example, the UK and Germany battled to build ever-larger vessels. For instance, 1906’s HMS Dreadnought stretched to a bewildering 527ft, its 18 massive boilers capable of carrying the ship over 7,000 miles. This obsession with size continued through much of the past century: from the aircraft carriers at Midway through monsters like the USS Enterprise, the US’s naval rivalry with both the Japanese and the Soviets was largely seen through the prism of square footage and engine size. However, with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, and the later rise of so-called ‘grey zone’ conflicts in the
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Middle East, naval planners on both sides of the Atlantic soon changed tack. “Specifically during the Global War on Terror,” says Dr Jason Thomas, vice-president and director of the operational warfighting division at the Center for Naval Analyses, “smaller vessels came to influence a range of operations, from combatting pirates to deterring terrorists”. This can be seen in practice too, with offshore patrol vessels (OPVs), as well as patrol boats, lately used solely in these operations everywhere from the Pacific to the Mediterranean. The recent importance of these vehicles, moreover, is reflected in the numbers. According to work by Coherent Market Insights, the global market for OPVs is currently $1.4bn – a figure expected to rise to nearly $2bn by the end of the decade.
Defence & Security Systems International /
www.defence-and-security.com
NATO MARCOM
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