INFOGRAPHICS OF COAST GUARD VESSELS #2: United States, Venezuela and Albania

Written by D-Mitch

This is the second post of a new category of infographics of various coast guard vessels from around the world. These infographics aim to highlight the most important equipment of the vessels; I do not analyze the systems in depth as I do for the warships instead I provide some basic information mainly from wikipedia (if else I provide the source) about the ships, their history and their capabilities.

 1.  Legend class cutters (National Security Cutters - NSCs) of the United States Coast Guard

USCGC Bertholf 

USCGC Bertholf with open hangars

NSCs are the flagship of the Coast Guard's cutter fleet, designed to replace the 115-meter Hamilton-class High-Endurance Cutters, which entered service during the 1960s. Ingalls has delivered five till today with one more being on sea trials. The Legend-class cutters are the second longest of all U.S. Coast Guard cutters, behind the research icebreaker Healy, and will replace the twelve Hamilton class cutters in service. These cutters are envisioned by the Coast Guard as being able to undertake the entire range of the High Endurance Cutter roles with additional upgrades to make it more of an asset to the Department of Defense during declared national emergency contingencies (the NSC is built to about 90% military standards). These vessels can be used for intercepting suspect vessels, or for rescuing swimmers, fishery protection, maritime homeland security missions, counter terrorism, or coastal patrol missions. To facilitate intercept missions, the Legend class can carry and launch both the 7-meter Short Range Prosecutor and the 11-meter Long Range Interceptor RHIBs.

Guaiqueri class offshore patrol boats of the Venezuelan Navy

Written by D-Mitch

PC23 Yekuana, third of the Guaiqueri class patrol vessels.
Photo: ventuari, shipspotting.com

The Guaiqueri class of Venezuelan Navy (Bolivarian Armada of Venezuela), is a class of four modern offshore/ocean patrol vessels featuring stealth technology with reduced radar and infrared signatures and special design to minimize the propulsion system's noise emissions and vibrations. The designation is Avante 2200 and sometimes they are reported as POVZEE from the Spanish Patrullero Oceánico de Vigilancia de la Zona Económica Exclusiva. The vessels were built in Navantia shipyard in Cadiz city of Puerto Real, the period 2008-2010. The vessels' mission is monitoring and protection of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) to ensure national sovereignty and territorial integrity, protection of maritime traffic, defense of strategic interests, search and rescue, relief and other humanitarian units, detection of smuggling, drug trafficking and illegal immigration and monitoring and data collection of operational and environmental intelligence.