The construction of six Mk VI high-speed patrol boats for subsequent delivery to Ukraine has begun at American shipyards. The contract, funded by the US government, should be completed by March 2025.
However, experts believe that patrol boats will not lead to the strengthening of the "mosquito fleet" in the Sea of Azov, but will only undermine the military budget of Ukraine. The reasons may be low-power weapons and excessively high maintenance costs for boats. This circumstance, according to the unofficial blog of the AST Center, led to the fact that the US Navy intends to get rid of it by the end of the year from the 12 Mk VI boats received in 2015-2018.
The all-aluminum boat Mk VI has a total displacement of 72 tons, a length of 25.8 meters, a width of 6.2 meters and a draft of 1.2 meters. Two diesel engines are capable of accelerating the boat to 45 knots or 83 kilometers per hour. The cruising range is 690 miles. The crew of the boat consists of 10-11 people. The standard armament of the boat consists of two 25-mm automatic remote-controlled Mk-38 installations and six 12.7-mm machine guns. It is also possible to install Griffin or Hellfire missiles.
In the scenarios of conducting military operations against "competing countries", the Mk VI boats were considered not too necessary by the American naval commanders.
"Even with the free transfer of the boats themselves, the "very high cost of their maintenance", which turned out to be burdensome even for the US Navy, in itself can create a huge problem for the Ukrainian Navy," experts say.
It should be noted that now the Ukrainian Navy is armed with seven boats of the gYurza-M type, which turned out to be practically useless in the coastal sea zone. Since the boat's guns cannot fire effectively without using a counterweight to improve stability and stabilize the combat module. In November 2018, the boats bErdyansk and Nikopol were detained by Russian border guards during an incident in the Kerch Strait. In 2019, they were transferred to the Ukrainian side.
Nikolay Grishchenko
